Google has transformed the web. We're better off because they do lots of great stuff: there's Google the search engine, it's already second nature to most computer users; there's Gmail which, in spite of being stuck in eternal beta, has raised the bar on both e-mail software and rich web applications; and there's lots of smaller attempts at cool web software with varying degrees of success. Sure, Google makes a (large) profit, but, ultimately, a lot of good people put a lot of hard work into building stuff that we use, adn that alone is worth our gratitude. But I'm not writing this post to praise Google – this will be about their dark side.

My first problem with Google is their mission statement. They want to index the world's information, which entails immense power; this would be worrisome in the hands of a government, even if it were transparent and publicly accountable, but Google is a company, a commercial enterprise, with a direct interest in using its power to make profit. The "don't do evil" thing is cold comfort, and it's only as good as their word.

To get a feel for what an entity could do with the power that comes from access to information, I encourage you to read Cory Doctorow's short story Scroogled and Aaron Schwartz's as-yet unfinished novel Bubble City. This is fiction, but it's thought-provoking.

So it seems reasonable to expect that I can just say "no" and go my own way, giving Google and others none of my private information. Note that I'm not talking about this blog – what I write here is explicitely written to be publically available, hence the Creative Commons license in the footer. But I fully expect to be able to keep my browsing habits, my e-mail, my photos and my files private.

There are two problems here, one cultural and the other technical. The cultural problem is lack of understanding of privacy issues: it's highly likely that somebody will store e-mails from me, or photos of me, on a Google server, without realising the implications of their action. I can only hope we will raise awareness about privacy in the digital age and encode that into our social conventions.

The technical problem is more immediate: I want to stop giving Google information about my search habits because I find their log anonimity policy unacceptable. This could be achieved with fine-grained cookie control (block cookies from Google) but Safari has no such option. Heck, I can't even remove the built-in Google search field – it's tied to the address bar, and I can only remove them together. Switching to Firefox would be an option, but I would be leaving behind a responsive and lightweight browser for one that doesn't respect the platform's conventions in subtle but annoying ways. So I've settled for a custom home page, with a big friendly search input, that uses Scroogle for annonimity, and it's been working out rather well.