Monday, February 9, 2009

Street Corners, Internal Organs, Watery Depths: Google Is Watching


Now you and your friends can play "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?" with Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) new mobile technology called "Latitude," but you, or they -- all of you, as a matter of fact -- can be Carmen.
All of your movements can be geographically tracked through cell tower signals, and everyone you let in on the game can potentially be your own personal stalker, following you by smartphone or regular old PC. Google's idea is that friends want to let friends know where they are, so they can link up more easily.
To be fair, the program does have privacy controls that let you allow different people different levels of information access. Still, the idea of adding one's minute-by-minute whereabouts to Google's vast storehouse of knowledge has a certain creep factor. What's next? A Google spinoff of the Truman Show? If you knew, would you tell me?

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