August 19, 2010 by Andre Jackson
Google boss Eric Schmidt has cautioned that in the future, young people may have to change their names in order to escape their earlier online actions. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Schmidt commented that he was worried that young people didn’t recognise the consequences of having their personal information free to view, online.
Google has been busy bolstering its social network presence, recently acquiring both Slide and Jambool. The two firms specialise in providing social networking services. Slide offers virtual currencies and payments, while Jambool is a popular gaming firm. Reportedly, Google have also invested in another gaming firm similar to Jambool – Zynga.
This could be a sign that the search giant is about to launch another social network, and industry experts have even gone as far as revealing the predicted name: Google.me. The company already owns two other social networks; Google Buzz, launched in February 2010, and its first social networking site, Orkut.
Buzz created controversy when it was discovered that it linked up user Gmail accounts without the consent of members. This revealed both address and contact details to the public domain.
Mr Schmidt commented: “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. Google will most likely store our users personal information in the future, but at present we know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are.”
Some experts believe that his concerns about the future are overly cautious. Social media consultant Suw Charman-Anderson has commented: “The idea that everything is stored online is not true. It will be quite some time before that can become true, because of the enormity of the internet. Google Cache is a snapshot taken periodically of some of the internet. It’s very hit and miss at the moment.”
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