Gizmodo has an extraordinary article on Google.
The Case against Google
A prolific science writer I know tells a story about how his mother calls him every time her Google is broken. What she means is that her Internet is down.
Yup, happens to me all the time...
For the last two months, you've seen some version of the same story all over the Internet: Delete your search history before Google's new privacy settings take effect. A straightforward piece outlining a rudimentary technique, but also evidence that the search titan has a serious trust problem on its hands.
The bottom line: People don't trust Google with their data. And that's new.
Follow the squiggle...
More:
At some point in the recent past, the Mountain View brass realized that owning the Web is not enough to survive. It makes sense—people are increasingly using non Web-based avenues to access the Internet, and Google would be remiss to not make a play for that business. The problem is that in branching out, Google has also abandoned its core principles and values.
The Sub-leads:
Search is Dying
The Move from Search to Answers
The Way Out
What is Evil?
What Now? Your Data. Your Privacy. Your Choices. Your Future.
From the Conclusion:
What Google seems to have forgotten is that we were only willing to give them all that data in the first place because it gave us great products and seemed trustworthy.
Google has forgotten why we loved it. It has degraded its premier product in service of promoting others. It has done devious things to ferret out information from its users that they do not willingly provide. It is too much focused on the future, and conversely too scared of current competition.
[snip]
Google is far bigger now, and far less susceptible to the whims of the public. But I hope that, to some extent, it is still listening. Because the case against Google is for the first time starting to outweigh the case for it.
Google may have to get us to use Google+ if it wants to remain relevant. But it should be able to go about that in a fundamentally honest fashion.
If it can't keep its promises, if it can't avoid resorting to trickery, if it can't keep itself from subverting the power of its search engine for commercial ends, and on top of all that if it can't even deliver the highest quality search results at a default setting—the most basic thing people have come to expect from Google, the very thing its name has become synonymous with—why should you trust it with your personal data?
This is an excellent analysis. Please read the whole thing.
As denizens of the Web, we all have something to think about...
What says you?