Of Google, the Clouds and Privacy

There has been huge discussion of late around Google's plans to anonymize user
data after a period of time. It seems people have concerns around vendors in
general (and Google as the uber vendor in particular) knowing too much
about us.

Sometimes it seems that people can't see the wood for the trees.

Google's success comes almost exclusively from the fact that it created the
best, fastest, most accurate search platform in existence – this quality, speed
and accuracy is a direct result of billions and billions of individual data
captures all aggregating to a vast pool of information – and yes, some of that
information is personally specific and results in us getting search results
par excellence.

On another, and somewhat related note, there has been comment around a patent Google has under application that would see them create
ocean going data centres – these data centres would have the dual benefit of
harvesting ocean power to keep all those electrons flowing effectively, and
would also be mobile, able to deploy, like a veritable naval fleet, to whatever
data trouble spots exist.

ReadWriteWeb comments on the patent saying that;

It's hard not to want to sound the alarm, though, on such strange plans.
Google's huge, centralized store of data about so much of our lives is
inherently cause for concern – but put that data out to sea and outside of
ostensible government oversight and it's downright frightening.

Which, from my perspective, is a complete red herring. Let's face it – Google
stores its data in data centres all around the world – under myriad legal
jurisdictions and sliced up all over the place. And concerns around legal jurisdiction must be well and truly gone by now –
sure we've got the Patriot Act – but how well does it really work in a world
with data cut up into component bits and spread all around the ether?

So in relation to this patent – don't hold your breath – Google holds more
patents than I'd care to count – how many of them will actually see the light of
day. In relation however to the bigger concerns around privacy – I want to ask
our readers (who as Cloud Computing enthusiasts are a little biased it has to be
said) a simple question;

Are you happy to forego a modicum of privacy, in order to obtain a
better Internet experience?

Yeah… I thought so.