[LINK] Google going social

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

This may be a bit of a worry, or maybe simply my FUD. Who knows?

Google is looking at moving strongly into the "social layer" of usage.

"Google plans to add more social-networking components to its core 
products this fall, chief executive Eric Schmidt said this week."
<http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2369193,00.asp>

Google already has many of the components of a powerful social network
although spread out across different products. Basically Google hasn’t
had an effective way of bringing them all together.

So, it does look as if they are about to become 'social' for example:

"The purpose of Google Profiles is to enable you to manage your online 
identity. Today, nearly all Google Profiles are public. We believe that 
using Google Profiles to help people find and connect with you online is 
how the product is best used. Private profiles don’t allow this, so we 
have decided to require all profiles to be public." 

<www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?
hl=en&answer=1192471&p=public_profile>

And, if public, then obviously also Google findable.

Now think about all the Google products, and what Google knows about us.

1.  Google Buzz – The Newsfeed
2.  Google Profiles – The Wall
3.  Picasa Web Albums – Photos
4.  YouTube – Videos
5.  Google Music (pending) – Music
6.  Android/Android Maket – The platform and means to obtain apps usage
7.  Chrome/Chrome OS/Chrome Extensions Gallery/Chrome Web Store – As Above
8.  Google Latitude – Location-based service/Check-Ins
9.  Blogger – Blogs (More open version of Facebook Notes)
10. Gmail – Email, Chat, Video Chat
11. Google Calendar – Event organization
12. Search profiles – important to any social network
13. Google Wave 
14. Google Apps – Getting it used internally at businesses and schools
15. Aardvark – Q&A
16. Google Reader – Easily Follow news sources and share links
17. Knol – Wiki-like content to provide information pages about subjects
18. Alerts - Email updates on the topics of your choice 
19. Blog Search - Find blogs on your favorite topics 
20. Google Chrome - browser 
21. Directory - Search the web, organized by topic or category 
22. Images - Search for images on the web 
23. News - Search of news stories 
24. Scholar - Search scholarly papers 
25. Web Search - Search billions of web pages 
26. Code - Developer tools, APIs and resources 
27. Docs - Create & share online documents, presentations & spreadsheets 
28. Groups - Create mailing lists and discussion groups 
29. Translate - View web pages in other languages 
30. Mobile - Google products on your mobile phone 

My point? 

The world should be getting serious about online privacy *real soon* now.

Cheers,
Stephen