Don't be evil? Are you sure?

It looks like The Indy has fired another broadside at Google over privacy concerns. In an admission that won't shock too many people, Eric Schmidt told a conference yesterday that the company's intention was to enable users to "ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?'" There's some lovely wording in the article, not least the wonderful second paragraph suggesting Google has 'revealed details of how it intends to organise and control the world's information.'

It would be a bit of a laughable stitch-up job - if there wasn't a big chunk of truth to it. It's been said so many times before that it's hackneyed, but Google is in danger of becoming evil by mistake.

It's not just Google, either. Microsoft is playing around with way of identifying us as we surf (downloading YouTube video of Top Gear? Checking the footie scores? You're probably an office worker in his mid 30s with a health problem.) Danny Hillis is also keen on the idea of jolly big databases of everything.

There's a couple of problems with what the search bods are doing.
Firstly, there's little discussion of how they will take into accounts
the laws of various countries. From the Indy's article, it sounds as if
the Information Commissioner's Office and the EU are playing catch-up -
if indeed the search engines can be caught. Who is regulating who?

Secondly, although these engines will be seen as infalliable by many
users, they are demonstrably incapable of accuracy. By that, I mean the
sort of decision-making that Schmidt is talking about. While a great
number of the factors helpful to choosing a job may be available to
Google in the future, it won't have access to all of them. There is a danger inherent in relying too much on information from one source, or one type of source.