Google has certainly hired plenty of whiz kids good at solving brain teasers, but a couple of recent examples shows how socially distant those whiz kids may be.
The new Google Dashboard feature, for instance, shows you every single bit of activity logged during use of Google products associated with your login.
That's right: Every email, chat, YouTube video, blog post, Web search -- everything. And it's all being used to target advertising and content to you.
Somehow, according to Google's logic, this is supposed to make you less worried about the privacy implications of such a powerful company.
It is, at least, a boon to drunks prone to blacking out while continuing to browse online -- if you wake up with a foggy memory and deep sense of regret as to what you may or may not have posted to YouTube, it will be right there, permanently archived in Google's data centers.
In another telling incident, it seems Google Vice President of Search Products Marissa Mayer may not have understood what she was getting into while making a radio appearance to promote the new Google Music song lyric and sample search service.
After making her pitch, Mayer was subject to radio station 910 KNEW morning team Armstrong and Getty wondering aloud how Google might help them find naked pictures of her. Classy! But wholly within the expectations of anyone who actually listens to morning drivetime drivel.
(On a side note, you can find plenty of pictures of Mayer in couture of varying degrees of fabulousness quite easily.)
Where should Google's socially-awkward-engineer culture actually pay off? Google Commerce, the new search product offering retailers Google-powered technology to improve product searches for shoppers -- and, presumably, advertisers, since those searches will end up -- where else? -- on a customer's Google Dashboard logs.
Jackson West bows before our new God, and asks only that Google be a merciful deity and not of the vengeful variety.
