Don't Kill the goose that laid the golden egg

Much hysteria this week over Google and the information it holds on us.

It's true that if search is to become ever more bespoke, Google and others like it will have to carry on building their databanks. It's a tension that could define the information age: a growing thirst for highly personalised or relevant knowledge on the one hand and concern about privacy on the other.

But images of Google as Big Brother are over-blown. No company in history has ever given consumers so much for so little. Gmail, Analytics, Blogger, Documents, Maps ... the list is long, full of innovation and growing every day. What's more, it's all free. 

More important, perhaps, Google is also changing the corporate ethos. The "greed is good" culture of the 1980s and 1990s has given way to a new altruism - in Google's case a desire to better organise the world's information.

Of course in the long term it could all go tits up. Google could fall into the wrong corporate hands (there are many) or America could go the way of dozens of democracies before it and become a police state. But that's a different proposition entirely and not one that should stop the company in its current, largely benign, incarnation pursing the ultimate in search.

For the moment at least, it seems to me that Google remains a force for consumer good.   

Comments

[David L]

I completely agree. Google has helped the internet become the useful tool that it is today. The applications which it has for email, search maps etc... are all vastly superior to their competitors, and their efforts will surely spur on others to improve their services. Overall consumers win substantially