The Greatest Stalker of All Time: Google, Inc.

I have no idea when Google was first introduced, but what I do know is that my life would never be the same without it. In the early years, Yahoo was my search engine of choice; it was one stop shopping! On one site I could check my email, get my daily gossip fix, get the headline news, check scores from last night's football game, get the forecast, chat with my friends on messenger and do the usual searches when I needed info. People were always talking about how great Google was, but I didn't really like it because the homepage was so plain. Its blank white screen was a far cry from all of the entertaining and distracting links and photos on Yahoo's page. But eventually, I began using Google's search engine exclusively because it seemed to give me more relevant and accurate information than all the other engines combined.

Little by little, I was using Google for EVERYTHING. They introduced Google Earth, a really cool 3D map of the world that you can zoom in and out of, viewing everything from the playground at your old school to the topography and terrain of the Tuscan countryside.

Then there was Blogger. What was once a bootleg site used by pseudo-writers (including myself) to produce their blogs, is now a damn good site that made blogging a helluva lot easier once Google got their hands on it. In addition to all of that, there's Google Maps for the directionally challenged, Google Picasa for those of you who are sick to death of Shutterfly, Google Sketchup for you design people, Google Video Player, Google Calender, Google Talk, Google Mars, Google Moon, GOOGLE, GOOGLE, GOOGLE! Everything on the planet (and apparently outer space too) is run by Google!! Just a few months ago they purchased YouTube, solidifying their stake in the stalker-web world.

It's not all of those services alone that makes Google the G-SOAT(Greatest Stalker of All Time), it's actually their new email service, Gmail that takes the cake.

I resisted switching to Gmail, but now I'm sold. You can easily search through emails using keywords, a nifty chat system allows you to IM friends, you can archive emails, and all of your email conversations are kept in the body of one single email. So when I send an email to 20 people, instead of having a million new messages arrive in my inbox, all replies are kept in the body of one email so that I can easily keep track of the conversations. How cool is that?

I noticed one day that there are lots of ads within Gmail. I also noticed that the ads were products or services that were directly related to whatever email I was currently reading. A friend of mine that works at UBS Investment Bank sent me an email and while I was reading it I noticed an ad about the private wealth management services offered by UBS. My friend replied to an email I sent to her in which I was talking about how I really wanted a tuna melt with lots of cheese and a new lease. Right next to that email were ads for Starkist Tuna and a new luxury apartment high-rise in Manhattan. Then all of a sudden I realized that it wasn't a coincidence; Google was reading my emails and playing on my sympathies by showing me those "sponsored links." STALKERS!!!

So not only do I plan my day on Google Calender, chat on Google Talk, search for everything under the sun on Google.com, send all kinds of incriminating evidence over Gmail, but I'm also suckered into clicking on links and potentially spending money all because of a conversation I'm having with my cousin about Triscuits and leather boots. How ridiculous is that! Google, Inc. has access to almost every facet of my life -- Who I talk to and how often I talk to them, what I love, what I hate, what my plans are for the day, who I stalk on the web, what sites I like to visit, what words I have trouble spelling, where I'm traveling to for the holidays, what videos I watch over and over again, etc., etc. Google knows and remembers just about every single thing that millions of people do once they log into a service that is provided by google.com. Pretty ridiculous, huh?

But that doesn't scare me; I want more!

The good people at Google, Inc. need to take technology just a few steps further and develop more services, like Google Child - a site that gives birth to your child and happily raises them from the ages of 5-18 and pays their college tuition. Or maybe even Google Smack-a-Ho, the service that will beat a bitch's ass for you when you don't want to risk messing up your hair or getting your own ass beat in the process. And let's not forget Google Find Me A Good Man - the site that automatically compiles the information of billions of eligible bachelors from around the world that don't owe back child support. Google already has the well deserved reputation of G-SOAT, so they should just go ahead and make the world an even better place and offer Google Government Assistance - the site that completely removes retarded, washed-up, incompetent, and loser politicians from office.