Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned that young people will need to change their names to avoid their internet past.

Schmidt claims that the personal lives of young people are so thoroughly documented on social networks like Twitter and Facebook that it will be necessary for them to change their names to hide from their online history.

Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal that people do not understand the consequences of having everything they do online recorded all the time by internet sites.

He also said that he believes that people will be allowed to change their names to avoid embarrassing information and pictures posted on their friends’ social network profiles.

[ Side observation: Searchable facial recognition software will make changing your name and identity a moot point, short of changing your physical appearance. Ironically, Google has invested heavily in facial recognition technology as well. ]

Schmidt also predicted that at some point Google will know so much about people that the search engine will be able to help users plan their lives.

Google will be able to use people’s profiles along with location-based tracking via smart phones and online activities to keep users informed about their surroundings and daily tasks.

Google wants to personalize and automate search to the point where it can predict what people need to find out about before they even think to search for it.

Schmidt ventured into Aldous Huxley-style Brave New World territory by saying: “I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”

Google will know who you are, what your interests are and who your friends are and use this personal data to make suggestions for you.

This isn’t the first time Google’s CEO has made controversial statements on amount of personal data it collects on people through the internet. Last year, he stated: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Remember, these are only his public comments on the subject and probably represent just the tip of the iceberg of what Google’s future search plans involve. Interesting stuff, indeed.

[ Source: Telegraph.co.uk ]

Here is some Google news that is sure to make the privacy advocates bolt their doors and lower their blinds.

The top brass at Google is discussing the possible use of facial recognition technology.

Google currently uses facial recognition tools on their Picasa picture sharing site. The tool allows users to name people in their photos and then searches and finds other pictures where the same faces appear.

So far Google has not used facial recognition software for other search services. For instance, Google has not used facial recognition in their Google Goggles service. Google Goggles lets people search for something on the web by taking a picture of it with a mobile phone.

Privacy advocates are concerned that using facial recognition in Google Goggles searches would allow people to track strangers by simply taking a picture of them and running an internet search on it. This could potentially turn the technology into a dream come true for stalkers and identity thieves.

However, Google is facing competition from other facial recognition services like Face.com that are already pushing into this area of tech.

Google has recently been stung by revelations that their street view cameras gathered information from unsecured WiFi connections during the past several years. This is giving the company pause over the possible use of facial recognition technology in their search areas.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt stated that the collection of WiFi data did not cause any measurable harm to users. He said Google would do more to educate people about privacy concerns.

The genie is out of the bottle on this one. If Google doesn’t offer this technology to users, someone else will. The question is whether or not Google wants to take the blame if the technology is ever misused, which, like all technology, it inevitably will be.

Facial web searches of people will happen, its just a question of time and service provider.

[ Source: FT.com ]

Google’s Matt Cutts recently discussed search engine trends and search predictions for 2010. Matt discussed where search engine technology is going in 2010 –

New Types of Data Searches:

Data overload is a big worry among web search engines. As a result, Google is trying to divide and categorize new searches for different types of information, examples include: Google Book Search, Google Patent, Google Government Search, Google Blog Search etc.

Semantic Web Search:

Google’s search engine is become increasingly sophisticated. When a person searches a keyword or phrase on Google, the search engine can factor in such things as synonyms, phrase structure and user intent when determining what search results to return.

Cloud Computing Search:

As more people get comfortable with online computing, more of them will choose to store their data from onsite hardrives and store it in the “cloud”. As a result searching in the cloud for relevant information will become increasingly important.

Real Time Search Engines:

For some searches people need the most recent news reports. Thanks to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, where trending topics catch the latest buzz, the need for relevant real-time search results will become increasingly popular.

Mobile Web Search:

As more people rely on mobile devices for their information, web sites will have to be formatted and searchable from these smaller browsing platforms. Google plans to have a big role in that as is evident with the development of their Android mobile platform for these devices.

CNBC will air a one hour documentary special on Google Thursday, Dec. 9PM ET/PT called “Inside The Mind of Google.”

Maria Bartiromo will host “Inside the Mind of Google,” which tells the story of how Google became the web’s top search engine in less than a decade.

The show will discuss -

How Google has climbed to the top of the search engine market.

Google’s strategy for continued growth.

How Google plans to handle the issue of people’s privacy.

The Google search engine is the most visited site in the world – two-thirds of web searches worldwide are done through Google search.

The Google search engine handles over two billion searches every day, giving the search engine giant a large amount of personal information on people. In fact, Google may know more about you than any other company on Earth, possibly even more than your own government.

Our web searches; the contents of our emails and the sites we visit provide unimaginable amounts of raw personal information for data mining and business intelligence.

Maria Bartiromo asks Google executives exactly what they plan to do with all this personal information. Bartiromo also interviews privacy advocates who say that Google’s collection of personal information is a threat to its users.

For more information on CNBC’s “Inside The Mind of Google”, you can watch the video preview below -

Google announced yesterday that they will add enhanced people tracking and location tools to their Google Latitude search service.

The two new location features are “Google Location History” and “Google Location Alerts (beta)”.

“Google Location History” will allow Latitude users to review and store their past Latitude locations. Think of this feature as virtual electronic breadcrumbs that you can use to backtrack your past activities and travels. Google Location History can also help you visualize your travel history on both Google Maps and Google Earth or replay a recent trip in location order. Per Google, Latitude users can delete their location histories whenever they wish.

“Google Location Alerts” will now be able to recognize a user’s regular, routine locations and will send alerts for a friend’s location nearby only when a user is at an “unusual” location or when they are at a “routine” place at an unusual time.

Google cautions, it can take their system up to a week to learn a person’s “unusual” locations and start sending alerts.

To learn more about the Google Latitude application, you can watch their video below:

Source: Google Mobile Blog