What Would Google Do?

What would Google do if they were our bank or credit card company, with access to our every purchase?

More on the dugg article shortly. Oh the pressure... of owning a blog. Even it's really just mostly the moral equivalent of talking to myself. Pathetic. Must. Blog. Now. As a result, I haven't been the most discriminate when it comes to blog topics. So i latch on the first topics that catches my attention. Which brings me to the digg article (link below).

Blogger O'Reilly puts forward some interesting applications to mashing massive amounts of digitized data and data mining them. O'Reilly writes:

What would Google do? What would Google do if they were our bank or credit card company, with access to our every purchase, our bank balance, our history of paying late or early, our salary and our savings rate, our preferences for where we like to eat or shop? What would Google do if they were our phone company, with access to our every phone call sent or received, how long we talk to Joe and how quickly we call Mary back? What would Google do if they ran our supermarket's loyalty card program, tracking our every purchase?

Sounds too much like Orwell's 1986? Maybe. But i say, George was two decades ahead of his time. Bring it on Google or whoever decides to run with this idea (uhm Google). I'm already suffering from information fatigue. Daily, constant multitasking is beginning to take its toll. I'm also not getting any younger, so I could use all the help i can get in offloading some decision making to technology. Like helping me determine the precise moment to buy low fat vs whole milk for household consumption. We've never gotten it right so we end up running out or throwing away spoiled milk. A rather simplistic example, i know. But Mrs Traveler and I spend waaaay too much time agonizing over this every week.

Or what would Google do if it were a sports team? All those stats finally being put to good use. Can you say moneyball? At a more mundane level, I could use all the help i can get on my fantasy teams.

I'm surprised this hasn't been dugg as much -- 4 so far including me. Before it's all over, I'm betting O'Reilly's blog will be self fulfilling. All yours, Google.

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