Google Knows
by anil on March 17, 2007
Now everyone is known to the world through an Email ID. Or if you know an Email address, you can trace down the person who owns it. That became magnificently possible with the social networking revolution on the Internet. But there is a limit to the extend of information you can dig out this way; to the extend the owner of the Email ID decides to expose about himself. We cannot go further down but Google does.
Roughly, one in every two people who searches the Internet uses Google and Google handles more than 200 million searches every day.
When you run a search in Google for the first time in your browser, Google will set a Cookie with a unique ID in your browser. There after, Google knows that all the searches you are running are coming from “you” and presumably they keep record of them all.
So, based on the searches you run on Google, they can build a “picture” about you–what you want, what you do, what’s bothering you, your interests, hobbies, and probably what are you planning to do this weekend. May be, after God (“Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account” –Hebrews 4:13), Google knows you best. Now closest friend of man is not his wife or even a human being any more; it is Google (or Internet search engines in general). People share the most private thoughts with Google.
This is harmless till they link that “picture” with the real you. That happened with the introduction of Gmail. You might have noticed that even if you type gmail.com, you login to mail.google.com. The moment you successfully log in, they can associate the above-mentioned Cookie with your Email ID.
An Email ID in Gmail is not like yet another ID in Hotmail or Yahoo. Each Email ID has the “genealogy” information attached to it. Each Gmail ID is created out of an invite sent out by an existing Gmail ID. So it is almost impossible to disguise yourself before Google. Besides knowing who you are, Google also knows whom you are related to. For example Google knows that you are Ram, husband of Meena and friend of John.
Google even knows what you do out side Google to a certain extent. For example when you sign up for a new third-party service (with your Gmail ID), Google knows that you did so. They even keep track of the links you click in Emails and chat texts.
They are the best in the world for text parsing and analysing. And if we closely examine we can see that that makes the core of all their technologies. Google can even analyse your chat live. So think twice next time you chat with your friend on Google to discuss a new business idea or when you use Google Documents to type a new business plan. The point is that Google is a privacy bomb which can blow up any time either though a security breach or by the data mining bureaucrats of Washington.
Google, after handling trillions of queries from around the world by now, might have an interesting picture about the people in this world, I’m sure. Nobody has ever got a chance to see the world at such a macro level yet.
Trade Union in IT Sector
by anil on January 20, 2007
Our country which missed the industrial revolution has got another chance of a lifetime to catch up with the developed nations–that is the IT industry. We are a recognised force in the IT sector and an acknowledged competitor in this new and emerging sector.
But this is a newly acquired status. We need to work hard to maintain it. A carefully-thought out game plan is required to sustain this position (as this industry acquires momentum, runs up to its peak and till it dies out). Then only it can make any substantial change in the economic scenario of our country. That means we should be able to maintain this cash inflow at least for the next twenty five years.
We get IT contracts from outside mainly because it’s cheap to get the work done here. Besides this financial advantage, there are other factors which help to run this business smooth such as effective communication, reliability of companies, predictable turn-around time, etc.. If any of these parameters is not met, a business transaction will become infeasible. Or India will become a bad destination for sending out work to. And we will miss this opportunity too to become a developed nation (in 2004-05 ITES alone aggregated revenues to the tune of USD 5.2 billion).
So that is the context. Now lets come to the point. There is a proposal coming from the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU) which argues that IT professionals are coolies of the information age and they are being exploited. So it needs labour union, they say. Following that suggestion the state IT policy of Kerala released a few days ago sports a green flag for trade union in the IT sector.
They are coolies of the information age. I agree with that concept; it’s true in the sense that they are many in number, they work like an army and for prolonged hours. But they ignore one fact: they are also paid the highest salaries. More over, they are skilled laborers and there are plenty of opportunities around. If he or she doesn’t like a place he or she can move into another. If they work for prolonged hours, they are paid for that. If they are not, there are many employers they can find who will.
I agree that there are good guys and bad guys. But to control the bad guys union is not a good idea which knows only primitive methods to tackle issues. It can affect the functioning of the business and eventually the image of India as the most preferred IT destination.
We can resort to other means to protect IT and ITES professionals, if necessary. We have a government to look after such situations. We have a Ministry of Labor which can appoint a watch guard, for example. It is government’s job to protect its citizens. We should try out that first before bringing in a parallel mechanism such as trade union.
It would be worth remembering that we need to sustain our status India has been enjoying in the world IT sector. India needs to grow at this pace for a few more decades. Think about it.