Google has long ago ceased to be the little search engine that could. The Mountainview Chocolate Factory has turned into a massive data-slurping behemoth with growth aspirations that make me think of Skynet:

Last fall, Google released a brief video of a data center it built in 2005. The facility held 45 shipping containers, each housing 1,160 servers. Google is now operating about 35 data centers across the globe, and if you extrapolate, its total server count – server consolidation aside – is around 1,827,200. That figure is well above recent press estimates. And it may be low. After all, that data center was built in 2005.

According to a recent public presentation from the company, Google is intent on scaling its worldwide infrastructure to between one million and 10 million servers, encompassing 10 trillion directories and a quintillion bytes of storage. And this would span “100s to 1000s” of locations around the globe.    (The Register, 22nd April 2010)

So Google probably operates around 1.8 Million servers , may plan to scale to 10 Million servers,all connected by its private Googleweb, and runs 13 % of all websites on the Internet. Now they also want to own the last mile to your home by providing gigabit Internat access to household and businesses in some communities … aka Google Fiber.

Yeah – a light-speed fiber Internet connection would be cool, but I won’t be signing up for Google Fiber. Here is why: they already know why too much about me … about you … about all of us.

For example, when Google’s Streetview cars cruise through your neighborhood, they don’t just take pictures, they also record WiFi signals, including the MAC  address for your WLAN AP. If you have a Gmail account, they know whom you’re communicating with, they know your calendar, they know what you’re searching for on the Interwebs, what computer you’re using, etc, etc. All just to find out what ads you might be interested in. So once you sign up for Google Fiber, they know your address, whether you have WiFi, They will have financial info about you, maybe even know who your employer is. They can then connect your virtual life with your real life. All that just to find out what ads you might be interested in?

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 24th, 2010 at 10:05 pm and is filed under geeks, Just plain nuts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.