Is Google Becoming The Ultimate Big Brother? Latest Acquisitions Suggest So

You may have noticed Google acquiring a bunch of robotics companies in the past few months. The next move was Nest and since then they’ve taken over DeepMind – an artificial intelligence company – as well.

The combination of physical products that interact seamlessly with heavy data and could potentially use artificial intelligence to increase the functionality of the product has some suggesting that Google is attempting to build the Internet of Things.

They want control over a ‘real life internet’ – the data generated by people as they move around their everyday lives.
There’s a few contenders making their way toward the same goal; General Electric (GE), IBM and even Facebook, apparent competition for the DeepMind acquisition. Which one has what it takes to control the devices that control us?

Over $4billion has been spent on new companies that deal with physical products highly augmented from smart use of data. It seems Google is betting big money on the belief that one day most, if not all, of our consumer products will generate and rely on data. Not only can they capitalise on the sale and management of the products themselves but they can also open up new avenues of revenue.

IBM and GE aren’t out of the race yet. The same amount of money – $1billion – has been spent by IBM on it’s artificial intelligence project, named Watson, in the hope it will bring in over $10billion before the decade is out. GE has made strides in the industrial industry with a similar strategy to Google but for machines used by corporations rather than consumers.

Either way, neither of the companies are very close to making large amounts of revenue from their research projects, which may explain why Google’s strategy has been to focus on companies already turning good revenue. They already have proven patents and intelligence useful to the eventual piecing together of a large network, driven by well designed products backed up by seamless integration of data. Data that is embedded with artificial intelligence.

What does this mean for the privacy of our lives? Google already has a monopoly on the data of what we do with our time on the internet – is it safe to trust them with the data on what we do with our regular daily lives as well? Is it worth the loss of privacy for the convenience the products will bring?

What do you think? How will Google’s development of an ‘Internet of Things’ affect your privacy and quality of life?

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