I just listened to the YouTube 'AD' for Arizona State's switch to Goggle
for email and Goggle Apps. I say Ad because Google owns YouTube and
this clearly was a professionally done, commercial advertisement. I
also noticed that the next two choices of YouTube videos presented to me
were "Interviewing for a job at Google" and "Why use
Gmail". Oh yeah, then came "real sexy naked girls hot
webcam porn". I'm not kidding, that's what came
next.
Clearly the switch to Google would save the university significant (read
boat loads of) money and provide new capabilites for FREE. I find
it interesting that near the end he likens getting these capabilities to
being able to incorporate alien technology into their university
community.
Hmmm, and what do the aliens want from us? Not much, only a legal
contract for unfettered logging and search of our correspondence, the
documents we choose to store on their space or transmit using their
systems, and our activity and behavior patterns while connected to their
systems.
Google continues to grow its capabilites because corporations and
governments are willing to pay large sums of money to obtain these search
results or demographic analyses. Governments are also eager to
issue legal demands to obtain what they cannot buy.
I for one, think the time has come for MSU to switch to a system that
could provide potential employers of MSU graduates (for a fee) with
demographics about whether our students spend more time searching the MSU
library system, online sports scores, or visiting the High Times web
site. If Arizona State's student behavior has better demographics
maybe that employer should just skip MSU and attend AZ State's job fair
instead. And just think about the possible synergies of using
realtime demographics of on campus activity for direct online marketing
to MSU students. Now my tuition dollars not only buy me an
education but can also funnel virtual salepeople directly to my
MSU-branded Goggle online presence. That's way cool.
Be careful what you wish for. Genies do not easily go back into
their bottles.
Bob Kriegel
systems analyst
Dept. of Animal Science, MSU
not only is grey the new black, but search is the new privacy