Google is Watching You

I feel I should bring up the question again that I had today in class. "Will my Xanga blog posts from middle school be read a hundred years from now or will they be obselete?" Reworded into a bigger question, it would sound like,
"Can the internet be considered a place to store long-term information?" 

As we discussed earlier, this question is up in the air. There is something so solid and real about printed material. Things in the virtual world may not be "recaptured" after many years and loss of bandwidth or whatever (I am no expertise or even amateur in the world of computer science, so this "bandwidth" idea may be completely irrevelant)


And can we bring in the whole "Nationalism, Empire, and Monarchy" theme to this? I submit that we can:

If Google, Inc., the number one search engine that is used, has access to all of this information about our lives, are we already being forced into an open government deal?


Google-watch.org says, "At another level, it's a struggle over who will have the predominant influence over the massive amounts of user data that Google collects. In the past, discussions about privacy issues and the web have been about consumer protection. That continues to be of interest, but since 9/11 there is a new threat to privacy -- the federal government. Google has not shown any inclination to declare for the rights of its users across the globe, as opposed to the rights of the spies in Washington who would love to have access to Google's user data."


To tie these two things together, I think that as a nation, and even as a world, there has to be some sort of agreement made regarding huge international internet based indexers like Google, and their powers in the affairs of human's rights to privacy. At the same time there has to be some sort of way of knowing where our information is stored, and for how long it will be available on the internet before we need to erase it. 


Another concern that I will raise is this:
What if Google's owners takes advantage of its situation and starts making threats to erase the data of those who get in there way?


Does anyone else see this as a potential problem? Or am I missing some major point that makes this a benign threat? Perhaps yahoo and the other search engine competition could keep everything in check? Give me your thoughts!