Google sure seems to be everywhere these days. And it's easy to accept that they will use their powers for good. One poster points out that this technology makes it more likely that the pitches we see will be relevant to our needs; but in a larger sense, who knows what we need? Perhaps we really need to save money, which is made more difficult by a constant onslaught of ever-more-tempting pitches.

In the area of privacy, they might not always have the choice to First Do No Evil--the government could compel them to turn over information that they would prefer to keep confidential. Also, it appears that they are trying to "out-Facebook Facebook" by opening up their platform--and data--to outside developers: "Google will announce a new set of APIs on November 5 that will allow developers to leverage Google’s social graph data. They’ll start with Orkut and iGoogle (Google’s personalized home page), and expand from there to include Gmail, Google Talk and other Google services over time."

The details are sketchy, but unless they offer end-users the ability to maintain strict and fine-grained control over what is done with their personal data, this capability could certainly be exploited for unseemly ends--Facebook has had problems with people marketing their applications overly aggressively, and I think they could make more improvements on this score. On the other hand, by opening up this information, Google might be making this market even more open to competition.

One final bit of positive news out of google is the new YouTube nonprofits program, whereby they will provide branding support and publicity for nonprofit videos free-of-charge, in what looks like a cool bit of generosity.

One thing's for sure, Google is hard to figure out, and all-powerful at the same time.

Paul Hyland

Silver Spring, MD

This was a refreshing article. I recently reread Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, and was easily able to place modern-day organizations into the positions of her characters. My conclusion was that the Ellsworth Toohey of today is Google. As the previous letter mentioned, we get hooked on Google by their nifty gadgets, and hear their refrain of "Do no evil," only to find out (too late) that they've been after something much deeper and more sinister than the public ever imagined. It seems to be a universal truth that any company, when it gets to be big enough, is a real danger to the individual. And in an age where increasingly we are defined by our data as stored online by various organizations, we should be concerned that we have less and less control over that data that defines us.

Alicia Borgman

Columbus, OH

It is amazing to me that Jeffrey Chester is raising an alarm about Google. It is like a modern-day chapter straight out of Atlas Shrugged. Google is a true innovator that has made the Internet easier to use for billions of people. Google is introducing a level of efficiency in marketing that has only been dreamed of in the past.

Why do we dislike spam mail, junk mail, telemarketers etc.? Mostly because the offers that are sent our way are entirely non-relevant to us. We have no interest in most of the items that are marketed to us, and we get annoyed that we have to spend even a fraction of our day deleting and wading through distracting ads etc.

If Google is successful, then we can imagine a future where most (if not all) ads targeted to us are relevant.

Knowing about only the products and services that are relevant to our needs is an advancement, not a violation of our privacy. It frees us instead of holding us back, allowing us to have solutions presented to us instead of being subjected to bogus ads for things that we have no interest in. This is a future that is to be welcomed, not feared by a "progressive idealist" or a non-profit parasitic organization that could not exist if not for the donations of workers and companies, and tax revenues.

Chris Sotomayor

Albuquerque, NM

Well, we all seem to use Google all the time, but sometimes we find that Google is doing things we'd rather not have done. It seems that, just like the drug dealer who gives us free samples, Google is getting all of us used to using its free services, while at the same time exercising less savory tactics and goals, even including US foreign policy goals, as this article, "Does Google Censor Cuba?," from the Cuban website Juventud Rebelde explains. Cuba has many problems, as anyone who visits or follows it can tell you, but denying Cubans access to search tools won't help solve any of them.

Walter Lippmann
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/

Los Angeles, CA