Reducing my Google footprint

Every now and then, I find myself measuring the extent to which my digital life is bound up in Google. That extent is considerable. Below, I’ve listed the various Google products which I presently use, or have used in the past. While a mere fraction of the many Google offerings, it’s still…a lot.

Daily or frequent use:
Blogger
Feedburner
iGoogle
Webmaster Tools
YouTube
Calendar
Gmail
Docs
Chrome

Occasional use:
News
Groups
Code

Formerly used, now dropped:
Adsense
Alerts
Analytics

That represents a significant corporate presence in my online activities. Microsoft, long labeled an lusting megalomaniac of a company, wishes it had the reach of Google. It all came about gradually, a consequence of Google’s ubiquity. Indeed, I could easily find myself using as many as forty-four Google products whose functionality encompasses the totality of my digital life, everything I do or might do online.

As Tommy Lee Jones once said of a pharmaceutical conglomerate in The Fugitive: That company is a monster.

It would be one thing had I sought out Google in every instance, inviting the firm for every purpose. That is not the case, however. In at least one significant area, regarding a product or service of some personal importance, I literally woke up in the morning to find that I was part and parcel of Google, Inc. This is what happened with Feedburner, and it served as a kind of last straw. This is when I started wondering if what was good for Google was indeed good for the country – or for me, at any rate.

There’s a temptation to look the other way when a tech concern that you generally like grows so big, so quickly. At least it’s a benevolent despot, you might think. There’s no such thing, however: there are only despots, and sooner or later the Eye of Sauron will turn in your direction. You might luck out, of course. The terms and services imposed by Google for the use of Product X might not become onerous, the level of performance or customer service for Product Y might remain acceptable, the security and privacy of your personal information and online activities might seem inviolable to you.

To the extent that you have concerns in any of these areas, however, Google’s ubiquity is problematic, if not downright threatening.

Time for a change, I think. I’m ‘into’ Google, as they say on various mobster movies, for a lot; time to roll that back, way back. This isn’t about hurting Google, as if it were even possible for me to do that, and it’s not about purging Google altogether. It’s about reducing one company’s presence in and access to my life, which seems a healthy goal and an act of personal control. Later on, I’ll blog about my progress in this.

I’m not saying that you have to follow my lead and reduce your own Google footprint.

But I’d consider it.