Google Has Your Voice: Should You Worry?

Jul 12 2009, 8:55am CDT | by Robert Evans

Back when Google launched their Chrome web browser they took a lot of fire for putting a program that records what people type in the Omnibox address bar. Some people have wondered if Chrome OS will contain a similar program, maybe even one that monitors everything you type, online and off. In fact, in general people are starting to worry more and more about Google. And that's a good thing.

As far as corporations go, Google is one of the most loveable ones out there. They're staffed and run by hip young geniuses who have fashionable offices and a really cool corporate culture. They release applications and innovations that make all of our lives that much simpler, and most of the time they do it for free. What's not to love about Google?

Aside, of course, from their worrying tendency to cave into government pressure. They went along entirely with Chinese demands to censor their search engine in that country. Google took a lot of flak from that one too, but they really didn't deserve to. Working with China will make them a whole truckload of money, and that's really all a corporation is obliged to consider. Asking them to put their personal morals above profit is like asking a politician not to dissemble.

All the same, it's good we're trusting Google less. As the PC World article pointed out, we're giving them an awful lot of our personal information. Google Voice even saves records of your voice in order to aid their voice recognition software. As understandable as that may seem, it means that Google now has pretty much everything short of your DNA and fingerprints (and we're only one fingerprint reader on a Gphone away from that). Your email conversations, your calendar, your search history, and probably a great deal of your financial info are all on their servers.

We put so much trust in Google, but we seldom think about whether or not they really deserve it. Maybe it's high time we started to reconsider Google.*

*It's okay Google, I still love you. Please invite me to Voice already!

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Robert Evans
The excitement about new smartphones, tablets and anything mobile drive Robert to unearth the latest rumors and developments in this fast moving space. He adopted 4G as soon as it become available and knows where the mobile market is going.
Robert can be contacted directly at robert@i4u.com.