Google knows you better than you
Recently I came across this article on the Google blog about the launch of Google Web History. If you have a Google account and their browser toolbar installed, it will keep track of all the websites you visit, allow you to search through them, and give you stats on what you do online. It’s like del.icio.us but completely passive and encompasses anything you do with your web browser. Thinking that it sounds rather big brother-esque? Me too.
But that doesn’t stop people from using it. It seems that people really do trust Google with vast quantities of information about their lives. I can just about cope with using their Gmail/Gtalk services, but I’m very conscious about what personal things I send over email, and I say on IM. The concept of keeping everything about your ‘digital life’ in a central place which is easily accessible and linked together strikes me as one of those great ideas that you would find listed in a 1970s ‘Things technology will do for us in the year 2000′ article along with replicators and hoverboards.
However crazy it may seem to most of us, there are some people who take this to extremes, recording every bit of information about their lives in a digital form. While it is possible to understand how collecting so much data about yourself is an intruiging concept (remember the Truman Show?), it’s a whole other thing to hand that information over to a large for-profit company, even if they supposedly don’t do evil.
