Google's Social Identity Crisis: I Google, Therefore I am?

I 'googled' the line above by Descartes which I verily butchered before beginning my rant to ensure I had my source right. For many of us, Google is a necessity- from the search of the most mundane of topics to tackling some of the most important issues, we "google," and we find.

Lately, the search giant has been expanding it interests beyond the delivery of maps, providing mobile phone operating systems and helping with those nagging lyrics that were stuck wrong in your head. Google has now set its heart on taking over the world of social media networking. But it asks you to approach your online life with caution- to the extent that you may have to change your identity altogether.

"Young people may one day have to change their names in order to escape their previous online activity," Google CEO, Eric Schmidt has warned. He told the Wall Street Journal he feared the new generation does not understand the consequences of having so much personal information about them online. On being asked to share their opinion, the public responded with mixed feelings.

Mr Schmidt said: "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time. I mean we really have to think about these things as a society. I'm not even talking about the really terrible stuff, terrorism and access to evil things," he says.

He provides instances of your previous life which might seem innocuous to you such as photos of under-age drinking, causing public nuisance or being snapped in a picture which could discredit your future professional integrity. He predicts that the past will remain to haunt you and it could ruin your career if the press digs it up years later. (I love how everyone is afraid of the media)

Due to the way in which social media networking, geo-tagging tools and mobile technology are evolving, life will change on so many levels because of the information Google would have collected he said, "we know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are." Google also knows, to within a foot, where you are. The possibilities are endless: "If you need milk and there's a place nearby to get milk, Google will remind you to get milk. It will tell you a store ahead has a collection of horse-racing posters, that a 19th-century murder you've been reading about took place on the next block," Schmidt adds.

"The thing that makes newspapers so fundamentally fascinating—that serendipity—can be calculated now. We can actually produce it electronically," Mr. Schmidt says.

As an organization that specializes in providing information, it is interesting that their concerns about data privacy are alarming to the point of instigating paranoia amongst the online community. But, according to some experts, his concerns about the future are "overstated".

"The idea that everything is stored online is not true," social media consultant Suw Charman-Anderson told BBC News. "It will be quite some time before that can become true because of the enormity of the internet." Adding to the argument she spoke to the issues of archives such as Google Cache, which store older versions of websites, she said. "Google Cache is a snapshot taken periodically of some of the internet. It's very hit and miss at the moment," Zoe Kleinman of the BBC reports.

It is further stated that whilst companies specialising in "cleaning up" internet profiles already exist, Ms Charman-Anderson emphasised the need to change social attitudes towards personal content on the web instead.

And while Google moves towards social networking with rumoured 'Google.me' and the acquisition and investment in other social networks and gaming sectors, such as Slide and Jambool, it would appear that Schmidt is simply looking out for the next generation of "Googlers."

Photo Credit: Andrea Bohner