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What's Google Up To?

OK, there has been a lot of buzz about Google recently, and part of the buzz has been its Google Secure Access offering. Basically, this is like a wireless VPN to Google's servers, who then fetch what you need, encrypt the results, and pass it back to you. Interesting idea - and with a very limited rollout currently - but what does it all mean?

I have two take-aways on this, and I could be totally wrong on both, but here goes:

• Geo-Contextual Ads: You search Google today, and ads are brought up that make sense according to your query. Let's add another layer of refinement to this - where you're located - to serve up more relevent ads. Google know what access point you're hitting, so if you search "San Francisco pizza" it know to serve up those restaurants on the west side of town before the eastern ones. That turns Google into a more effecient Yellow Pages, which is very powerful for some searches (services/purchases, for example. Hey, it could give you all the plumbers in a three-mile radius from your access point).


• Metrics: If a lot of people start using this service, the data Google can collect will be immensely valuable. They'd be the Nielsen's of the Web. Even in aggregate (and I hope to god they don't store that I searched for strippers, just that a person who reads CNN and Slashdot also searched for strippers...), this is information businesses would kill for. And Google can use this info in the same way, to offer up more targetted ads for your profile.

Is this the direction they are going? I dunno. But with all the dark fiber they have purchased over the last few years, and all the money in the bank they have - and the incredible ability to essentially make supercomputers out of clusters of gray box x86, boxes, why the hell not?