You have to excuse my verbosity in this post. I am stuck on this flight for the next 6 hours, and I do enjoy writing. The good stuff is at the end, sorry.
I just spent nearly two hours on the tarmac of JFK, trying to get my flight started from New York to Oregon (stopover before I buzz the bay area, and then scoot back to Chicago), and I got bored. I needed to save batteries on my two laptops (six hour flight), so I did what everyone does on JetBlue: stare at the little television screen in the seat in front of you.
I recall back from my wee youth a trip to the old country (Europe), and watching the little moving map with the flight. It was up on some big free screen on the 747; ghetto, I bet it wasn’t even “real-time.” So, I headed over to channel 13 (or whatever) and brought up the JetBlue map with of a grin.
There it was, my little plane, stuck on the goddamn tarmac. At least we got free waters. But as I glanced up to the corner of the map, what did I spy? Why a small Google logo, as if that was a surprise.
And then it came to me, Google owns me. Between Wave, Gmail, Search, Calendars, Docs, Reader, News, Trends Adsense, Adwords, and a dozen other services, I am their, well, bitch. The only major Google service that I do not use is Google Analytics (thank you Clicky).
Google is everywhere, and in everything. If Google had decided a few years back to get baked into the whole world, they succeeded. Google has me by the balls, do they have you?
I have been bleating for quite some time, asking Google to let me pay for Gmail, to get on some more stable servers, with some actual customer support. Google does not listen to me (understandable), and so I keep using Gmail for free.
But what about the rest of Google’s empire? If Google decided to shut down for a day, I bet you that the global stock markets would stop trading by noon, and half the jets in the world would fail to take off. Google is now so pervasive, that they have become nearly a second power grid, or municipal water system: they are in everything, and we depend on them so much, that we forget that depend on them at all.
Google may be a monopoly in search, I tend to think not, but Google is moving to becoming an empire online and off. Google is as Google does, and there isn’t shit that we can do about it. They make the best products and sell them to you for free. I pay free and get amazing tools. Where else am I going to go?
But it scares me, I have to admit. Since I don’t pay Google for all the free love, they have no obligation to me. I am not a customer or client, I am a user; something that is much weaker, in terms of strength of relationship.
I would feel much more comfortable if I was paying Google a fair bit, say $100 a month for all that they do for me. I owe them, I am sure. How many ads have I clicked on in Google in the last six months? Maybe three? How many messages do I have in Gmail right now? Over 60,000. You see the point.
Will Google do this? I hope so. Look at it like this, all Google stays free. If you want actual customer support, someone on the telephone, and to be placed on less compacted servers, you give Google money. Not a lot, they already profit on your free ass, but some to make it all straight. I bet Google could still make amazing margins.
It is a win for everyone: I make my relationship with Google much more solid, by becoming a real client, Google gets more money, and my services get better. All that for around what I pay for my (soon to be chucked) iPhone a month? Deal, sign me up.
Google is too good to lose, too big to go away, and so important that we can’t live without it. It’s time that we made the relationship a real one, and not what we have now. What do you think?
you are already paying very much for google (and thats the genius part of googles business model): your personal data does not belong to you alone anymore. Google saved it already on its servers, interconnecting every little piece of data, creating a personal profile of you, knowing where you are, what you (and your friends) are doing, what you like / dislike, what you will do tomorrow, who you are talking to, where you work/travel, and so on. Lets hope that google headquarters will never forget their prinicple “do no evil”…
CKStreit commented on twitter about the, Semantic Web: World government global database. Google’s involvement is mentioned. http://bit.ly/4JUj3y
It is very true that if we directly paid Google we would be less vulnerable. At the moment, we pay a dangerous price with our privacy that is tremendously valuable.
Entering directly in contract with Google would make the company accountable.
As a free provider of services, inevitably, Google lacks concern for our data: there has been incidents of data loss, human error (data sent out by mistake), we have no idea of how data are secured, what is done with our data and how they are processed. We need more transparency and maybe external audit of the mega giant activities.
Google is benefiting from a quasi monopolistic situation. Google just aggregates so much that it IS a serious threat to our privacy, reputation, identity, finances, carrier, health, etc…
We cannot trust anymore Google don’t be evil when openly Google is under-estimating the value of our privacy.
In exchange for using the “free” search engine and other softwares, we give up all privacy and individuality. We need to start figuring out how to be relieved from these captivating digital chains.
Perhaps we need to get our information form our real free libraries that exist in our communities, do some exercise and walk, use our skeleton and muscles and our rusty bicycles and really communicate with other people around, and re-learn again to relate in human terms, and make it a point to focus on exchanging useful real services to solve real social problems, not software procedures.
If we continue in this happy search engine’s path, then we will be the main contributors to a future where this (financially) huge company will not only own the information plus everything else it can purchase, but it will also dictate our culture and way of life, and we will not be able to help it but be, in effect, dutiful Androids.
Amen!
you mean arrrrr men!!!!
If you want it so badly just sign for google apps service. I think it meets all your criteria
You are very right norwind, nothing replace real relations and real librairies. When I lived in Paris, one of my favorite activities was spending time at the Bibilotheque Georges Pompidou, reading books, going to the exhibitions, theatre, etc… Unfortunately where I am now, to reach a library with specialised law books, I need to take the train and spend between £17 to £7 just to get to London where many libraries do not have public access. This lack of access to books and culture has been my initial motivation for using the internet. I enjoy Twitter as it allows me to read and discuss subjects, it also connects me to a world physically out of my reach. I strongly believe on the virtue of e-learning. I have tried and was able to meet in the real world many interesting people met through the internet. Twitter can help to widen your circle of real contact if you wish so.
Now, these many positive aspects of the virtual world should not be corrupted by commercial exploitation of users personal information given out in a certain context for a specific audience. The distinction between private sphere and Public sphere is not such a dichotomy as it appears to be and I advocates for an expectation of privacy in public by keeping control over the spread of your information.