Paranoia...... Or is it???

I've been a bit out of sync with tech news these past few months........ Not, that I was very informed to begin with, but when I heard the rumour that Google had launched the Beta version of Google Wallet in the States....... I started getting some really weird thoughts!!! Thought I'd share them with you guys o'er here......

Today, A major chunk of our net usage seems to land Google's way. I don't really know how many Google services most of my friends use, but I recently realised that I seem to be using quite a big bunch of them. Let's count:

1. This blog of mine is hosted by Google (Blogger being a Google product).
2. My Primary Mail Accounts are Gmail Accounts.
3. I've almost completely become dependent on Orkut for my daily dose of Social Networking.
4. Instead of making use of my Organiser in MS Outlook, I've started using Google Calendars due to its 'portability'.
5. I have begun using the Personalized Search service offered by Google, to try and streamline the results I receive.
6. I use Google's Picasa Web Albums to maintain a few private albums.
7. I've also started using some other Google Tools like their Webmaster tools and Google Analytics.

But, this isn't really the end of it, I'm pretty sure that I use some other Google Services as well, some that have just sort of slipped out of my mind right now. Now, if we were to go through this list all over again from a voyeur's point of view, the following conclusions could very well be drawn:

• Google, thanks to my blog, knows quite a lot of the itty-bitty details of my life.
• Google knows everything about my communication with my friends, colleagues, family etc.
• Google knows most, if not all of my friends, and also knows about my interaction with them.
• Google knows everything about how I manage my time, or at least the little of it that I do try to manage.
• Google knows exactly what I am searching for on the net, the frequency of my search and even my level of satisfaction with the result.
• Google knows what I look like and where I've been.
• Google knows who has been-a-visiting at my blog and what they've found most interesting here.

Now, if we were to compare this small list to the actual services Google has on offer, we could very well come to the conclusion that Google has become the proverbial Big Brother. Say, we were to use in addition to these aforementioned services, a prevalent and rather popular Google service like the Google Toolbar with its advanced features activated, Google would know exactly when and where we've been on the World Wide Web, thanks to its PageRank crawler. Also, had Google launched it's Dodgeball.com Social Networking Service in India, and had we subscribed to that as well, Google could and would very well know exactly when and where we were in the real world as well. And, when you think about the services I haven't even mentioned as yet like Froogle, and the soon to be released service, Wallet, Google would not only know what we were shopping for, it'd would also know exactly how much dough we have left to spare, you can really get the jitters.

Though the implications of these thoughts did seem a little profound when they first saw the light of day in my mind, they do seem a lot less scary now. The reason behind this being that I am too insignificant a person to hold too much value for so large an entity. I'll take your leave now, and hope that some of you do continue this discussion in your comments to this post. I do hope to continue with this thread a little later on though.......