Hell. You can’t sneeze at the moment without inadvertently spraying mucus on a Google press release. Hot on the heels of Google Under The Sea comes Google Latitude – an opt-in service that lets you plot peoples’ locations in real time using Google maps and GSM technology in their phone. Predictably, there’s a lot of worries about privacy – Some Dude from Privacy International claiming that “Google is naive if it thinks there are adequate controls on this feature,” and citing all the usual stuff about how we shouldn’t let people spy on us or whatever.
As ever, it’s worth getting past the immediate concerns with these things. Anyone with a Facebook account, Gmail or Windows has helped to make the very idea of ‘privacy’ seem quaint and distant. So where is Google headed with this stuff? Well colour me cynical, but we’re just inching towards contextual advertising where the ‘context’ is reality.
Google might be engaging in puffery about parents keeping tabs on their kids but at the same time they’re neatly sidestepping the need for all that awkward Bluetooth guff that every coffee shop is pushing these days. You’re casually strolling down Briggate, tailing your wife and her personal trainer, Google knows where you are… maybe your shopping habits… certainly your shopping history. Maps. GSM. Google Voucher codes. Fill in the blanks.
Is it a good thing? For all the brouhaha about this stuff, and for all we live in an endless web of data connections, bits, bytes and megabytes there remains a simple solution: turn off your phone.