ZDNet Education blogger, Christopher Dawson, wrote a post titled, "Google is your friend." Dude, I can assure you that Google is not my friend. Trading partner? Sure. Sometime ally? Maybe. Back-stabbing neighbor? Now we're getting closer.
I do acknowledge all the wonderful things Google provides -- search services, Google Earth, Picasa, and so on. However, it's important to recognize two facts about Google being your "friend:"
Unfortunately, ugly seems to be Google's style. For example, read this New York Times comment in response to yet another user's forced account lockout:
As customers, we bring the same expectations to Google’s personalized information services, like Gmail or Google Docs, its word-processing service, as we do to our bank’s Web site. These are places that hold information very dear to us. My bank recognizes that losing access for days at a time is unacceptable. It provides me with round-the-clock phone support for account problems. So, too, should Google, even if I pay the company not in the form of a monthly account fee, but with my attention, which Google commercializes by selling slices to its advertisers.
The Times has it right: for many of us, Google has become a most favored trading partner. Sadly, we nonetheless labor under the illusion of Google being our friend, when it's only a profit machine like any other giant corporation.
In fairness, none of this lessens the educational benefits Christopher describes:
I don’t think I’m off base in saying that Google provides the largest, free set of Web 2.0 tools available to the general public, meaning that our users can access them at home or school and generally across platforms (including Linux in most cases).
Maybe all the IT failures blogging has made me cynical, but despite Google's benefits, I still wonder whether friends like this means we don't need enemies.
[Image via The AntiSyphus Effect.]