WARNING: I'm not as paranoid as this post. Quite. ;)

I follow the arguments that computer processing power is cheap and getting rapidly cheaper at a surprising rate. Because of this, I don't want to constrain ideas of "the worst" thing that could happen to be limited to things I can imagine now. I doubt it would end up killing you, but information is power and giving out information about you is giving away power over you in exactly the way that some people feared photographs were capturing their soul.

(That is, within a small number of years, "the worst" thing could be very much worse, and in unpredictable ways).

However, let's see:

1) "Government does bad things, made worse by Google's position and power" scenario --> Governments use phone companies to track "terrorists" by who calls who and what is said (or is rumoured to - see Echelon). It's not too far fetched that they could forge links with Google for Google to flag up suspicious persons by net activity (See recent story about German legislation mandating that ISPs block a list of pornographic websites. They could mandate Google.de to be included), and the list of triggers could be secret. So far so good, but ... a change in public opinion, a terrible government gets in power and starts adding more triggers based on the kneejerk fears of the day. Are picked up by it because you were reading an unusual amount about medical fraud? Because you were in the vicinity of a known communist's house thrice in a week (picked up by your GPS mobile phone)? Because of your religion, gender, sexual orientation, political leanings?

2) Techno-illiterate courts legislate that Google's information hoard is in the public interest and must be made publicly available. Anyone can now search all that stuff about you, all your emails, their contents. Have you ever wanted a stalker? Have any jealous friends? Is there nothing you would like to forget? Think employer-employee profiling, discrimination and bullying can't get much worse?

3) Nobody emerges as a Google sized competitor. Google becomes the de-facto choice for advanced image, video, audio processing. Google announces Google CCTV - desirable for companies because of the unlimited storage, web accessibility and tremendous analysis capability. Voices are transcribed, people are tracked, identified by sight, motion, limb length, gait... Soon all companies use GCCTV. Soon local councils do. Soon dflock can be tracked across systems. Google acquires eyes all over the country. Google starts population-scale experiments in secret. Can they predict where you will be? Can they, by dint of showing you different adverts, search results, articles with different slants influnece where you will be? Which stores you shop in? Who you phone? Which way you vote?

3.1) Voice control hasn't really got much further. Microsoft, Dragon Dictate, Apple, they're all roughly as good as they were. Google has been quietly training on youtube videos, GrandCentral phonecalls, GTalk calls, google mobile search. Theirs is much better. Any device from your satnav or car stereo to your TV or Kindle has Google Voice tie-in. Everyone loves it because you can talk in whole sentences and say things like "remind me to watch XYZ on channel 123 on Sunday" and it does. Google offer this for free because now they know what you're doing when you're not on the net - and what you're talking about when not directly addressing your devices. Goto (1) and (3).

4) Google starts accepting "bribes" by another name. CrummyLabs Sound Cards by some ad-words and they appear at the top of search results for Sound Cards. Not happy with this, they backhand a few more quid and their competitors results fall lower. Then vanish. Competitors drivers are nowhere to be seen. Forums discussing their competitors wind up on page 50. Reviews vanish. The only products you see, hear about, can easily purchase and get support for are those with ties to Google. Not just IT products though - why did you really buy that cooker? Google hires Derren Brown. You start to bank with Google Bank because "it's the best free bank" (well, that's why you think you bank with them).

5) It's 2025 and Google translate is as good as a human translator. All international business phonecalls go through Google Translate. All international political phonecalls go through Google Translate. Tranlsate isn't always completely honest and unbiased in its translations.

Information is power, Google's net is wide and growing wider. The more information flows through them, the more scope there is for them to do bad things, and the more incentive for legislative bodies, malicious employees, hackers, spies, to try to get their hands involved too. The worst thing that can happen is probably along the lines of you (us) being more and more a pawn in someone's business and political games, or being caught up in some witch hunt or having our lives ground up and spat out ruined by a juggernaut that doesn't even notice us.

We are buffetted by massive tidal forces now. Google is paving the way for those to be controllable, all the media forces synchronised and coherently pushing in the same ways. A laser not a light bulb.

(And if a sentient computer appears, which company do you think will spawn it? Which company has masses of computing power, masses of data, masses of smart people, masses of money, a corporate culture of machine learning and megascale processing? Such an AI would be constructed with implicit knowledge of you. Have you read "I have no mouth but I must scream"?

http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.c... ;) )