i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

I came across the following video: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/64111786/

This is 40-minute video exploring the history of Google and the company's current endeavors.  The video follows the founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, from their first meeting at Stanford to the new media-company that collides with old media businesses of newspaper, books, movies and television.

The video briefly questions Google's motives and it's ultimate goal.  Is Google becoming a powerful machine that feeds on people's privacy?  Is Google the ultimate information organizer or the ultimate big brother?

Currently Google controls a lot of information, from videos though Youtube, photos through Picasa, news through Google News, Mobile phones through their new operating system Android, books through Google Books, and tv through Google TV.  And, there are many more applications that organize (or collect) people's private information/knowledge.

The video also briefly talks about how Facebook could be the Google's main rivalry since people post valuable information everyday on Facebook and this information is hidden from Google.

I thought the video was quite interesting and it brings about several questions of what Google was then, what it is now, and what it may become in the future.  In addition, I think it is quite scary to think Google knows everything about you—everything you are writing in the Gmail editor, Google docs, Google search engine, or when you are using Chrome.  I can even see a parallel that Google is like MyLifeBits, only bigger in scale.