Mad Scientist or Big Brother?

Google used to be our friend, didn’t it? Google gave us the world’s best search engine, for which we were grateful. And a free blogging service, for which we were also grateful. Still are.

But something is happening to Google, something dark and insidious. It seems to be growing ever more obsessed with its power and success. There’s evidence of Mad Scientist Disease beginning to affect the Google management machine. Mad Scientist Disease is a nasty condition in which the infected person starts off working for the good of humanity, but is gradually consumed by the euphoria of success until he descends into a helpless state of mad megalomania in which all notions of higher principle get suffocated to death.

If you install a Google product now, Google assumes the right to access your computer and take an unhealthy and unwarranted interest in everything you do. I noticed recently that the ads on my computer were becoming relevant to the searches I was making of Amazon and suchlike. I didn’t mind that too much, since watching my window shopping didn’t seem so terrible. But it’s moved on a stage. Now I’m finding that ads are becoming relevant to words I’m using in e-mails. It seems that Google is reading my e-mails. E-mails are private; reading them is no different from having the Post Office open and read my correspondence. That isn’t right. And I’ve heard that people are now receiving spam based on their correspondence and surfing habits, which suggests that Google is not only accessing information to which it has no right, but is sharing that information with third parties.

The message is simple; it’s the same as you see on some tobacco products – the ones that say ‘Don’t start!’ If you have no Google products on your system, don’t start. Don’t download Chrome, don’t open a gmail account, and if you want a blog, go to Word Press.

We live in an increasingly Big Brother society in which government agencies assume the right to read our e-mails and text messages and listen to our phone calls. There are CCTV cameras nearly everywhere, watching nearly everything we do. There can be little doubt that Orwell is being proved to have been a true prophet. Whether Google is simply cashing in on this mentality for the sake of commercial exigency, or whether it’s becoming an arm of Big Brother Establishment, we shall probably never know.