It's become something of a ritual - every year, Google publishes its year-end summary of what the world wants, and every year I complain about how shallow it is, given what Google really knows about what the world is up to.
I've always liked the fact that anyone with a great idea, access to the Internet, and an unrelenting will can spark a world-beating company simply by standing up code on the Internet and/or leveraging the information and relationship network that is the web. That's how Facebook started, after all.
I'm quite certain the Windows 8 team is preparing to market IE 10 - and by extension, Windows 8 - as the safe, privacy-enhancing choice, capitalizing on Google's many government woes and consumers' overall unease with the search giant's power.
You happily give Facebook terabytes of structured data about yourself, content with the implicit tradeoff that Facebook is going to give you a social service that makes your life better.
When documents were analog, they were protected by government laws against unreasonable search and seizure. When they live in the cloud... the ground is shifting.
Google is a global Rorschach test. We see in it what we want to see. Google has built an infrastructure that makes a lot of dreams closer to reality.
