For quite some time now, Google has been throwing its weight around. We feared its market control and innovative genius, not mention its shear corporate monetary power.  This week they unveiled a project from the Google Labs, called Correlate.

To most, this seems like another aimless Labs project which has promise but doesn’t really do anything useful. However, to the discerning technophile it’s the canary in the cave; the monster is waking from it’s slumber. Google is starting to analyze and connect – or “correlate”, if you will – it’s data.

Now is the time when we (meaning “you”), should start to feel a shortness of breath. If they are starting to correlate the data of all your searches, it’s only a matter of time before they start to build a full psychiatric work-up on everyone that’s done a few thousand searches. Ultimately, the correlation of data will start to fill in glimpses of your personality, you didn’t intend.

This behavior will be considered on the up-and-up because it’s all just to better match the customer with the applicable marketing campaign. In reality is calculated  systematic invasion of privacy only the movies could dream of (see: Minority Report). Think twice next time you type in a search request. Definitely expect more personalized advertising.

http://correlate.googlelabs.com/search?e=sore+throat&t=weekly