Caught in Google’s Web?

I’ve been reading Robert Cringely’s PBS.org column for many years now. I like the way he writes about technology, although many of his articles are more esoteric than I care to get in to (or am able to understand). I really enjoyed today’s piece on Google: “When Being a Verb is Not Enough: Google wants to be YOUR Internet.”

There is this:

Google loves secrecy. That they’ve been acquiring fiber assets hasn’t been a secret, but the sheer volume of these acquisitions HAS been. Why? One thought is that it kept down the price since people didn’t really know it was Google snatching up this stuff (they’ve done it under a number of different corporate names). But if price was the issue, then why hasn’t Google just bought the companies that own the fiber? It made no sense until I scratched my head and thought a bit further, at which point it became obvious that Google wants to — in its own way — control the Internet. In fact, they probably control it already and we just haven’t noticed.

And this:

Google is building a LOT of data centers. The company appears to be as attracted to cheap and reliable electric power as it is to population proximity. In Goose Creek they bought those 520 acres from the local state-owned electric utility, which probably answers the land question posed above. By buying out all the remaining building sites in an industrial park owned by an electric utility, Google guarantees itself a vast and uninterruptible supply of power, much as it has done in Oregon by building a data center next to a hydroelectric dam or back here again in Columbia by building near a nuclear power station.

Of course this doesn’t answer the question why Google needs so much capacity in the first place, but I have a theory on that. I think Google is building for a future they see but most of the rest of us don’t. I’ll go further and guess that Google is planning to build similar data centers in many states and that the two centers they are apparently preparing to build here in South Carolina are probably intended mainly to SERVE South Carolina. That’s perhaps 100,000 servers for four million potential users or 40 users per server. What computing service could possibly require such resources?

The answer is pretty simple. Google intends to take over most of the functions of existing fixed networks in our lives, notably telephone and cable television.

–Robert X. Cringely, http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070119_001510.html

And much more.

I like Google, and I believe (perhaps naively) in their motto of not being evil. That is, I believe the current leadership believes in this and tries to act on that motto. Of course, as a large and growing corporation, it’s very difficult to act and be seen entirely in a positive light, so they will be criticized more and more as they grow larger. And it’s possible that down the line they will have new leaders and may behave differently and may not have such a lofty goal of doing no evil.

For now, it’s fascinating to watch them grow. I’ve used Google for search since very nearly the beginning, and am drinking more of their free beer than ever, in the form of services like Google Reader, Google Analytics, and Google Notebook. I just discovered Google Code Search, which will be a big help for free software development.

I enjoyed Cringely’s article for the glimpse at the possible scope of their activities in the future. To operate on such a large scale and with such ambition… What role *will* Google play?

I hope they continue to play nice.