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Royal Pingdom offered a fun post Oct. 19 dealing with one of my favorite topics: Google Creep.
Google Creep is my nickname for the spread of Google’s sphere of influence across the Web, starting with search, moving into Web applications and content such as YouTube, easing into the mobile Web, and just this month television with Google TV.
Royal Pingdom has assembled stats from various Web researchers charting Google’s dominance in search (StatCounter says Google has 91.4%), mobile search (98%, again StatCounter), advertising (68.8% BuiltWith claims), video media (YouTube, 52.5%: BuiltWith), etc.
Let’s not forget the march of Android, Google Maps, Google’s Chrome browser, and the soon-to-be-released Chrome Operating System.
“Try surfing the Web without touching a single Google service,” goes Pingdom’s challenge. It’s impossible.” Indeed, as long as your connected to the Web, Google seems connected to you.
Google , by dint of growing so large, walks such a fine line. Don’t Be Evil is an ethos that may one day ring in infamy if Google begins get into the machine-driven recommendations it is looking at in the name of efficiency.
Imagine this early AI applied to all of the aforementioned resources, including Google TV, where users are told by software what to watch when and then what to buy via ads.
Yes, I’m borrowing that oft-used clip Minority Report clip again, from YouTube of course:
It’s very exciting and very scary.