I saw someone talking about Google Web Accelerator on the Forum, so I checked it out today. It apparently makes your pages load faster by having all your web surfing happen on Google's server. Furthermore, Google explicitly states that they keep track of all your surfing if you use it. So, here's the question: are you comfortable with that trade? The curious thing is that I think most people are, if Google is doing it, but they aren't if the government (or MicroSoft) is.

I didn't install it. I'm curious to see how long it is before the public views Google with the same distrust it views Microsoft. My first instinct is that it will take much longer, because Google's services are 'free' (meaning they are trading their services to you in return for information about you, which most consumers don't have a clear way to value). Also, they are perceived to be fighting an unpopular company (MicroSoft), and some have a utopian view of Google (i.e., they really buy the 'don't be evil' motto). The two companies look very similar to me; they just pursue profit and monopoly in different ways. I think at this point, Google's more subtle business model is better (getting users to buy their services by giving up information they under-value), but who knows what the future brings? Will finally it become so clear that this sort of information is so valuable that in the future Google (or the company that replaces it) pays people to use their equivalent of GMail or Google Web Accelerator? Google has built quite a business out of getting people's information, perhaps they should be giving more for it? Of course, such business models have failed (miserably) in the past, the value of this information wasn't so demonstrably high then.