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The odd one out in Google’s Big Five

Nicholas Carr summarizes Google’s numerous product introduction, possibly resulting from its famous ’80-20’ rule. He reports the recent dominace of Sergey Brin’s ‘Features, not products’ formula vs. Marissa Meyer’s earlier “Throw it on the wall and see what sticks’ style.

In the end, he comes up with a list of 5 Key Google Products:

Google Search ("Google" goes back to meaning just search: for all information types, on all devices, personalized)
AdMarket (a unified market place for buyers and sellers, spanning web text, web video, web banners, print, radio, TV)
YouTube (YouTube expands from video to become the common interface for all media sharing)
YouTools (what Apps for Your Domain morphs into, with different tool sets for businesses, families, universities, and hospitals)
YouFile (a personal information management service, covering health data, finances, etc.)

All well and fine, but I think Google's YouFile product area will trouble privacy advocates around the world. In Google’s Cloud-like system, it will astound users when they will know about the amount of data Google knows about them through their searches, purchases, visits and so on.

These privacy concerns are not going away despite Google’s ‘fair use and safe harbor’ policy.

posted by Pramit Singh @ 3:16 PM