TSC Trusted Advisors’ Blog

Googleland!

A few days ago I sent out a tweet about an epiphany I had regarding Google. Why isn’t Google considered a utility? I think I know why but let’s start here: they’re considered part of the critical infrastructure, Google affects most of the world population, and Google can affect the events of governments and political relations. So, what part of this should continue to go unregulated?

Let’s go through a quick recap. Google produces a search engine that collects huge amounts of information from the Internet, scrapes personal information that it makes available to the government, creates web-based applications that more and more people are using to exchange sensitive information, and their assurance program still sucks. They’ve had outages and their license agreement absolves them of any responsibility or accountability. I should point out that after their last outage they did apologize. Good for Google.

Back to the recap: world reach, unrestricted access to worldwide data, and the ability to screw with governments and people. Hell, Google’s not a utility, Google’s a country!

From what I’ve heard, Google has its own brand of internal politics, there’s infighting and maneuvering and the result is poorly engineered products and bad decisions. Yep, I’m thinking Google’s a country. A self-interested country that’s not really concerned with the impact of their decisions, but a country never the less.

I remember another business/country: Ma Bell. It’s time for the US Government to sit up and take notice. They missed their chance with the Savings and Loans, Microsoft, and most recently Big Banking. When they miss we pay.

I think that it’s about time for the government to recognize the fact that information is just like power, water and sewage. It must continue to flow but in a way that’s beneficial to the public. After all, governments are supposed to be by the people and for the people, not the other way around. I think that Google’s lost their way and may need some gentle prodding by the government to remind them that they’re not to do any evil – even if it’s unintentional evil.