Putting the google bashing aside for a moment, their motto does sound noble: “organize the worlds' information and make it universally available”. And when they say information they mean all information. They started out with web indexing, but have moved far beyond that. Google Earth, although scarry, also is a wealth of geographical information. For example, I can just look up the layout of tramway depots in my city, or check out railyard layouts around the world. With just a few clicks and drags.

Their move into the audio-visual world is also an example of making information available to the world. The internet was once, long before youtube, touted as the replacement for traditional broadcasting models. Everyone could now send out their information. But it wasn't before sites like youtube that indeed everyone did publish their videos. Now, with google video, youtube and the likes, putting your own video online has become so easy that the masses are jumping on it. And google stores and streams this information, free of charge, no strings attached (or are there?).

The problem with all this is that not only do they collect this information, and make it available. They also collect information about who uses what information when (and if possible, with what purpose). Basically, they do this to to improve their services. Let us assume that this is indeed the case. Then there still is a big privacy issue here. Once google has these databases that they can use to build detailed profiles of your interests and behavioural traits, its use can be extended. For example, the US government could claim this database for 'homeland security'. Or (remember the AOL debacle), the database or a part thereof could accidentally leak and become available on the internet. Or hackers could gain access to the system and extract information about you. Perhaps to create a false identity, abusing your profile.

Their move into online applications, such as google docs & spreadsheet is especially notable in this respect. Although at first sight, it sounds nice. You don't need openoffice.org or microsoft office on your computer, you just use your browser to do all your document editting. Store your documents on googles servers and be able to access them from any computer where you can browse the net.

But several problems are apparent: first of all, what happens when your data gets lost? That this is not far-fetched has become apparent recently with the iGoogle mess, where users data was lost. Apparently, they were able to recover the data after-all. But all the same, it could have been lost forever. Imagine this happening to your documents!

But of course, once your documents are on googles servers, they can use them to build an even more detailed profile on you. They can scan these documents, maybe these are letters you write to your insurance company, maybe these are letters to friends or your financial administration in a spreadsheet. All this is then open to the same dangers mentioned before: abuse by governments, identity-theft by criminals and what more.

And if you are unfazed by all this, because you think the government wouldn't do such things, or that you have nothing to hide, consider what would happen when in 10 years there is a different government, with different priorities. Then you might all of a sudden be the 'criminal' they are looking for, and your online profile comes back to bite you!