I'm running a survey/poll on my Web site to promote my new book, "Inside Larry & Sergey's Brain."

If you're one of the first 10 people to give an opinion, I'll send you a free autographed copy of my book.

The person who gives the best commentary – either for or against Google's evilness – will also get a free copy of "Googled: the End of the World As We Know it" by Ken Auletta.

Please enter! It takes only a minute or two.

http://www.richardlbrandt.com/drupal/node/96

Thanks!

Google's might be becoming ever so slightly evil, but regardless of that, it's their potential to do evil that's growing very rapidly

That's true, and that's what concerns most people. My opinion, right now, is that Google will not take that path because people would abandon the site faster than you can say "Bing."

Google's philosophy has made it enormously successful so far. Why change?

I believed that too for a while, but as more of our data shifts to the cloud, Google will gain more and more control of it. They want our "golden copies" to be online, and when that happens, i'm sure we'll be paying them for that storage. In other words, Google will be holding all of our data for ransom. If we can't pay, we lose access. And that's probably the least scary and most "plain business" scenario that could end up happening. Let's not forget about big brother.