Welcoming our New Internet Overlords

This past week saw the launch of Google’s latest social network, accompanied by an unusual amount of hype—if you can consider quotes like “it has a chance” worthy of hype. Google+ is building their entire platform around the concept that in reality, people exist in many exclusive social circles, and often present different faces in different places.

This idea is nothing new, as Facebook has given us this same functionality for years now. The only difference seems to be the way the functionality is presented. Google+ pushes this functionality to the forefront of the user experience, forcing users to sort their contacts into different circles right from the start. Where Facebook gave us the option to add someone to a list, Google+ removes the choice, and thus mimics real life and real human interactions much more closely.

Google+ has also stolen and built upon a couple key elements from other social networks. Like Twitter, Google+ allows users to follow users, such as celebrities or industry professionals in a one-way relationship. Many people, including yours truly, use twitter less to tweet about ourselves, but more as an RSS feed. We follow magazines and news outlets, industry professionals and resources, celebrities and athletes, not just our friends.

On twitter, there is less interest in ‘who your friends are’ as there is on Facebook, but rather a greater focus on ‘what interests you’. These interest can be personal or professional, and its the professional side where Google+ borrows from another popular social network. Linkedin has allowed users to connect with our professional rolodex online (if you can even remember what a rolodex is). It is a place where we conduct ourselves in a professional, discrete manner. While this is an incredibly useful tool that everyone should use, the focus on being professional means there’s rarely anything terribly exciting going on. Rarely do we see anyone out in public checking or updating their LinkedIn profile. We may have professional contacts on LinkedIn, but if those contacts are social media-savvy in the slightest, they are posting items of interest on twitter, not LinkedIn.

If users follow industry professionals and publications for relevant links and information, it would make sense they would also tap into Google’s real-time search capabilities for all of their content. This overlaps is the key, as it would cement Google as the world’s news feed—a giant news aggregator that draws from across the entirety of the Internet in realtime… and this is where it gets scary.

We open Chrome on our Android phones to get to the Internet, login to GMail for our email messages, to Google+ to interact with ALL of our online contacts, use Google search to find content, manage our business on Google Docs, post our photos on Picasa, and upload our videos on YouTube. In case you didn’t realize, Google now owns our digital life—every single bit. Google now knows everything about us. Isn’t this what freaked us out about the CIA 15 years ago? But unlike our paranoid fears about the CIA, Google doesn’t need to secret tap our photos or spy on us with satellites, they are simply asking us to share most of our personal data, and we are obliging them 45 words per minute.  It’s strange people rarely talk about this. Google, a publicly-held company, strives to consolidate all of our online data and activity. Are they now a monopoly? Or is this where capitalism turns into communism? Whatever it is, it smells like AOL on steroids.

Anything we search, anyone we ever connect with, its is all stored on Google’s server. It would only make sense for Google to cross-reference all of this information with a handful of algorithms to build an incredibly-detailed, frighteningly accurate picture of who we are online. The impact this will have on Google Adwords could only be described as monumental. Google will now be able to target people on an extremely personal and intimate level, with more insight into individual consumers than ever possible. And make no bones about it… Google Adwords and YouTube Ads are the ONLY parts of Google that generates revenue, and they’re ALL that matter. Where Mark Zuckerberg wanted Facebook to be ‘cool’, Google wants Google+ to generate massive amounts of revenue through individually-targeted advertising, based on the data each and every user has submitted.

As our online interactions increase exponentially, Google is continuing to position themselves right between the user and the Internet. They did so via search in the 90’s and 00’s, and they will do so via social media and the web-browser in the 10’s. The same can be said of Apple, of course, with Safari, iTunes, the App Store, the iPhone, and the upcoming launch of iCloud, which will undoubtedly include or spawn its own social networking platform. Even Microsoft has Explorer, Windows Phones, and Bing, but like Apple, has failed to truly capitalize on search and social networking markets.

The real question is, where will Google draw the line? Will we find topics discussed in personal emails and Google+ feeds showing up in the ads Google shows us? With the recent hacking scandal plaguing poor ol’ Rupert, I’m sure this idea has been discussed within Google’s boardroom. I could only imagine the horror of a user who emailed an extremely sensitive personal matter, such as an unwanted pregnancy or serious illness, to a close friend via GMail, only to find their Google+ homepage or Google search results page plastered with ads addressing this topic. The outrage would be unfathomable.

If such things were to occur, Google would certainly face a serious user backlash. But would these actions be illegal on Google’s part?  We must ask ourselves (and our lawyers) what the definition of ‘hacking’ is? They could claim such functionality was done to benefit the user, and force us to accept it, just as they force us to add our Google+ contacts to a circle. We are giving Google this data of our own free accord, blindly agreeing to whatever terms of service contract they force on us. What are they really hacking at that point?

And what are they really giving us at this point? I’m not even sure what the real benefit of Google+ is, or why I should even bother signing up. It’s nothing I don’t already have, and it doesn’t really seem to offer anything better or truly unique. It’s a mashup of twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, but it doesn’t do any of them as well.

Google+ is gambling that people will opt to re-create their profile and rebuild their social circles so they’ll have one login instead of three. Interesting idea, but can Google+ sell us a product that requires users to input a great deal of data, to receive nothing new in return, aside from the convenience of one login? Although I’ve learned to never underestimate the ignorance and laziest of the average internet user, I’m not sure the re-entry and maintenance of all that data is worth the reward… if there is one.

That being said, I, for one, welcome our new Internet overlords. You can now follow me on Google+. FAIL.