Is This the Droid You're Looking For?

Over all the recent Droid smartphone hype, there is the looming shadow of Google. The idea is that Android::mobile devices is the 2.0 version of Windows::personal computer. Without realizing it, you're snug in Google's terabyte embrace. Is that so bad?

Tonight, November 9, New Yorker writer Ken Auletta talks to the Seattle Times' Brier Dudley at the downtown Seattle Public Library at 7 p.m. (listen to him on KUOW at noon). Auletta's book, Googled: The End of the World as We Know It is the "semi-official" story of Google; Auletta had access to Brin and Page, investors, and employees.

If you log in to Google and click on My Account, you'll see a Dashboard option that you can click--it assembles in one place most of the ways that you interact with Google. It's astonishing in some ways, the level of trust placed in a company that is gaining a market-spanning presence that will not need to rely on trust.

This is the dilemma Microsoft has faced for some time: How can we pretend that customers are making a choice by using Windows? The slogan is cute, but Windows 7 is about as much your idea as bicameral legislation. Google is also facing a privacy backlash as people reach their limit.

It's not a question of surveillance as such--most people have made their peace with online slices into their privacy. But they had at least an illusion of data balkanization on their side. The Android privacy policy doesn't reassure on that score. If anything, Google's demonstrated competence with database management guarantees a new level of (one-way) transparency.