Google’s really going fast and hard at my data. I just searched for something at Google.com and noticed some new “features” they’re offering which I found really disturbing, namely Web History. It aims to make your Internet activity much easier to track and manage. It aims to make your searches more accurate and relevant. It aims to give you some insight about your online habits.

It aims to do all of this using the data that you allow it to collect from you. You and millions of other people.

To you, you’re just one person and you can see how the service is great and will help you. To Google, you’re one tiny bit of a huge amount of data that’s going to help them pretty much figure out how people behave online. That information will, in turn, allow them to release new apps, improve their advertising and search algorithms and, essentially, make more money and be more dominant.

All of this makes me a little uncomfortable. My resentment towards Google seems to grow a little bit every day because of how pervasive its tools have become. I continue to use their search engine. I have a GMail account, though it only exists to collect AdAge newsletters. I flirted with Google Analytics. I use Google Browser Sync. I’ve made some serious money off Adsense. And as I write this paragraph, I realise how long this list is and how reliant I have become on this company. Again, all of this makes me a little uncomfortable.

The funny thing is that I don’t really know why it’s bothering me so much. I have no problem with Microsoft’s dominance. I, in fact, champion MS when people slam it. I don’t really worry about privacy to the degree that most people in the West do.

Because I can’t put my finger on the source of my irritation, I can only conjecture that it stems from the fact that Google has become a massive company. It’s not only the really good company that did search well and was vying to kick Yahoo’s ass, but it’s now a company that is kicking everyone’s ass.

It’s not the nerdy underdog anymore. It’s morphed in to the cool guy, the school yard bully. And no one likes the cool guy or the bully.

I can’t root for Google anymore. I don’t get surprised by new stuff it puts out. Rather, I look for problems — stuff that I can complain about.

That’s how this post started out. I read about Web History and immediately thought, “Damn, they want more of my data.” I didn’t bother to see what it offered me, how it could make things easier for me, how it could make search better for me.

I don’t think my complaints, or those that others are voicing, are invalid. They’re legitimate issues and concerns. And I think that it’s hard these days to like Google. No matter what it does.

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