Is Google a threat to consumer privacy.?

Michael Gottschalk/AFP/ writes:

Founded in 1998, Google runs the world’s most popular Internet search engine. For hundreds of millions of Web users, an online session starts at the Google search box. It’s a position that has given Google an outsize influence over anyone doing business on the Internet and that has allowed the company to build a hugely profitable and fast-growing online advertising system.

But Google’s ambition far exceeds the confines of Internet search and advertising. The company has an expansive interpretation of its already far-reaching corporate mission: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. For that, Google has built a powerful network of data centers around the globe in hopes of, among other things, connecting users instantly with high-resolution satellite pictures of every corner of the earth and sky; making the entire text of books, in and out of print, available online; and becoming the leading distributor of online video through YouTube, which it acquired in 2006.

At the same time, Google has taken its advertising system offline, as it tries to capture portions of large ad markets in television, radio and newspapers. It is investing heavily in mobile phone technology to replicate its online success in the wireless world. And it has built an array of online software programs, including e-mail, word processing and spreadsheets that it hopes will become the building blocks of a new computing paradigm — one that, unlike the Microsoft-dominated PC world, will have Google at its center.



Google’s unbounded ambition, as well as what many critics say is a cavalier approach to copyrights, has put it at odds with a growing list of companies in industries ranging from Hollywood to book publishing and from telecommunications to e-commerce. And the company’s appetite for collecting vast amounts of data about its users and their online habits has prompted increasing fears that Google could become a threat to consumer privacy.

Google is known for the quirky corporate culture created by its billionaire co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, which includes a chaotic, campuslike atmosphere at its offices, where workers are pampered with free, chef-prepared food and other amenities. Part of that culture includes a principle that some critics believe will become harder for Google to uphold as it grows in size. That principle: Don’t be evil.-- Miguel Helft, Sept. 14, 2007