Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Google about to take over the world...

So this month has seen Google Chrome and Google Android released to the masses.
I like Google and the fact that they encourage a free market and give me lots of great applications for free. But i have a couple of things i picked up on for a conspiracy theory I've been musing over. Upon the realise of Chrome (www.google.com/chrome) we are presented a comic explaining why and what. In this publication the sentence Google Lives on the web is used, also in the past when Google was scanning all the books it could muster, an employee of Google said "we aren't scanning these books to be read by people, they are to be read by AI" and finally in a document from 2006 about google's plans for the future, it had an entry that said it "wanted the largest AI department in the world". Many people have talked about the web being similar to a human brain, parts of the brain is better connected because we use it more (Google ranking anybody). Last year the Internet suppressed the supposed number of required web pages to become animated holding more information then a newborns brain. The neural pathway are far to far apart and slow (no matter what broad band you have) for this to work. But on a locally stored computer that copied the whole web (well just the really important bits).
Now it already makes sense to have AI looking at the web and making decision on what you want or think you want, maybe "Suggest" while you type?

If (and they are always big "IFs" in conspiracy theory's) Google already has a machine that is learning from the web, books and video (Google released a search on video audio sounds) it becomes quite a scary thing. For it to become a sentinel being in the real sense of AI, it must demonstrate an oppinion, what if it's opinions differ from mine?

Now for the point of the blog today - I quoted to my boss that a new time line had been mentioned - BG (before Google) - Again i will say i love Google, over the years it has helped me cement my place in the world, first as a spell checker, then as a reason to create new media jobs, with SEO and PPC AdWords and such. But what if a ghost in the machine tailored my search request to coincide with its own opinions. How many other people like my self don't even go off the first page of Google results, or like me do you search, scan, click, read, back, search and scan again? How many voices are being left out because the person saying it don't understand about SEO and the advantages of a well thought online presence. In the past this has always been a automated service, like a car wash, i didn't always get what i wanted but i could always try again. Now it could be more like a sales man who has too many red paper clips and i go in needing a blue one. But am told they don't have any blue ones, just red ones and they do the job just as well as the blues?

Also back to Chrome and Android - this i believe to be the final pieces to the Jigsaw that is Googles own online-OS (operating System). Apparently the browers that where being used before Chrome wouldn't cope with an online-OS, now Google have released a browser that will and made it open source so IE and FireFox can copy and update and when that happens the Google online-OS can be released because it will run on any system, with any of these browsers, brilliant!
And before you say it can't be true, how can Google offer a full OS when windows Vista cost you £150, before you tick the accept box on the T&C of Chrome check out number 17 and the text about Adverts:

Honor i rest my case!