Google's plans for world domination

When a software company, like Microsoft, manages to place their products everywhere you look, some paranoid loonies on the internet will always claim that the company is evil and is bent for world domination. And it seems as if Google is slowly getting there. Is Google headed for world domination? Well, for small values of "world" maybe. Google has some excellent products, but half of them only work for the USA. Google Maps only shows addresses and driving directions for the USA. The Google personalized homepage, and Google Desktop, only show news, weather, and stockmarket data from the USA.

Then there are powerful forces that are keeping Google from taking over my life. I really would have liked to install and test the new Google desktop, especially at work, to be able to search my work files with the same ease as the internet. But on Windows 2000 you need administrator privileges to install Google Desktop, and I don't have those at work. Our IT servives even asked me to uninstall the Google Toolbar, because it was colliding with the firewall. At home I couldn't install Google Desktop, because it refused to cooperate with my McAffee Security Center. And no, I'm not uninstalling my firewall and anti-virus, just to get Google on my desktop.

All this makes me think that Google's tools are sending a whole lot of data back to Google. I'm pretty sure that if Microsoft software would send as many information from your computer to Microsoft, there would be a huge outcry. But Google gets away with it, as long as you don't have a firewall. Not that I really mind, I'm pretty certain that the data are not read by any humans, due to the sheer mass of them. But somewhere in the depths of our computers is a battle raging between Microsoft, Google, and security program providers, for control of our desktops and data streams.

On the computers I'm using, Google is losing this fight. They would need to become a lot more useful to Europeans before I would be willing to lend their programs a helping hand and resolve the conflicts with the firewalls.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:01 AM Permanent Link