So is Google evil? The infamous words ‘never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence” comes to mind. I would add naiveté but only in part. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin started the company “do no evil” was a founding principle and so too a mantra chanted in righteousness by those in their employ, but what is evil if other than a relational construction? In Borg fights the lines blur. Google may not be intentionally evil but for the power the company now wields, we find they certainly can be dangerous with recent events indicating Google not having the firmest grip on the technological behemoth of their own creation.

The China debacle is one case with international ramifications due primarily Googles lack of security consciousness. One of the first phone calls Google made upon discovery of the breach went to the National Security Agency. Google now has an agreement with the NSA in furtherance of their working arrangement which I well imagine pleases the NSA greatly since Google represents one enormous intelligence gathering data pile. For Googles part they switched to SSL encrypted G-mail logins and presumably for other accounts as well. The curious point is Google needing the NSA to tell them this, as in Google didn’t know? Or didn’t care? Given that encryption is computationally expensive we can deduce the mindset of a company who plays fast and loose when we spelunk their resultant HTML and find things like closing tags by their absence due byte savings all such provides.

Then there was the Google Buzz imbroglio with Google taken back by the concept that everyone may not want to share everything with everybody else by default. Such was their thinking and a pervasive thought process it is. Google is in the information gathering, storage, slicing, dicing and dissemination business. They make Billions not simply indexing the web, but tracking users online movement and habits for among other things, targeted advertising but moreover providing primo business intelligence wholesale which they do with model efficiency. Not willing to rest on their laurels, Google is hyperactive in expanding their data gathering mechanisms with the prime resource for mining being Google users. Free applications are simply a lure. See also: cloud computing.

Now then, having said all that, allow me to relate my latest observation. My client base is primarily small and medium business which near universally use Quickbooks for accounting and payroll. On recent occasion I updated one such company — a daycare as it were — to the latest version and noticed in so doing that the computer was running much slower than normal. Various widgets on screen made plain the accounting and payroll computer was running the Yahoo! desktop which I don’t advise but people do like to personalize their workstations. Actually I used to raise bloody hell but have backed off knowing the pervasive and often accidental nature with which such things can be acquired and simply clean the machines when found. I made arrangements to bench the computer over the weekend.

Stripping off the Yahoo! desktop and toolbars I found the Google desktop underneath and part of the Google desktop is Google Desktop Search for which a plugin had been provided to access, index and thereby make search-able… the Quickbooks database. Now realize what information can reside (and in this case does) in such a store. Names, addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, tax ID’s, pay rates, hours worked, bank accounts for electronic deposits and withdrawls et al; and basic information on all the childrens parents, including number of children enrolled (and their names) as required for general bookkeeping. I was not amused. A Google search on this plugin led me back to Intuit, the parent company of Quickbooks. Intuit, who had an entire self help section on using Google Search born from an alliance struck between the companies stretching back to 2006. Did I forget this? Apparently.

Now comes the questions. Is this wise? I’m not going to insinuate that Google is exploiting the company database but certainly the potential is there is it not? If not today maybe tomorrow? And where is the head of Intuit? It’s not like Quickbooks doesn’t have search of their own for they have had that since day one. For some marketing alliance they risk the trust of their clients by installing an internet enabled data access mechanism from Google who promises to “Do no evil?” What about nefarious third parties? And if there was a data breach, would we know it? Of all the questions that could be asked, these are but a few off the top of my head but does it not stand in example of Google, Intuit and their jelly headed thinking?

I removed the Google Desktop and the integrated search function. Of course I don’t know if it is really gone just because it says it uninstalled and there is no visible evidence remaining. I’m not chasing this any further than I already have but I am pondering the suggestion of disconnecting the Accounting and Payroll computer from the internet and updating by CD if that is even possible anymore. There would be pain for the client involved since funds transferred into accounts of various State and Federal tax collection agencies would no longer be automatic. Ultimately it will be the clients decision and my guess is they will stay with the status quo and sacrifice security for the sake of convenience.

So is Google evil? Depending on context we can say the company has built an infernal machine and I doubt Google can maintain enough control of the levers in guarantee that it won’t be absorbed in monopolistic self interest or compromised by the heavier handed agencies of nation states. Willingness to participate in the “Great Firewall of China” is enough example of that. Not saying no good will come from all this for certainly competition by wedging into previous cloistered markets is generally viewed as a good thing, but I do wonder about the declining street price of information privacy and security. Google of course being but one significant entity in the greater amalgam and perhaps the more benevolent exploiter in consideration of potential best case upsides. You didn’t think that free stuff was actually free did you?

For what its worth Microsoft hosed me harder when I updated Live Messenger last month. This after I told it “no” to everything except the simpler update which Microsoft ignored for the most part and screwed Firefox with the addition of two plugins, one of which explicitly designed for difficulty in switching back. Microsoft said this was to protect my choice. No doubt from the rogue elements that would switch me away from the Microsoft ecosystem having been abducted by one of Microsofts rogue elements in the first place. Of course we expect this from Microsoft, business as usual and all that. Barely mentionable otherwise. Not the first time Microsoft took upon itself to enhance Firefox and in one recent case caused that browser to crash. Obviously the Mozilla foundation was pissed and the come back to Internet Explorer because it crashes less campaign came to an abrupt end. An under tested security patch as it were, said the spinners. Or something. Mmmm K?

How do we explain to noobs that their ass is the prize in a borg war fought over the intertubes?

“Any corporation powerful enough is indistinguishable from evil.”

Have had computers do inexplicable things in the past though . . . I wonder if a facebook app might have done it?

Google is a corporation. I have no intention of taking their mantra seriously. I’ll use their stuff so long as it is useful to me and I won’t become emotional about my relationship with a corporate, profit-driven entity. Period.

Perhaps we should be less concerned with Google’s mantra and more concerned with what ought to be the tech-consumer motto: Don’t fall in/out of love with corporations & their products. These are business relationships.

I’ve quit using Chrome, but for a different reason – the adblocking isn’t up to snuff. Unlike the Firefox ones, these only seem to hide things and don’t stop connections to domains I don’t even want contacted (double click, google analytics)