No really, I met with a long-term customer yesterday and this is what he proposed to me. At first it sounds much like a conspiracy theory, and well, it is – but sometimes conspiracy theories can be interesting even if you have your doubts and are uncertain what you believe.

My customer first started saying that the likelihood of developing the technology that Google has developed is almost non-existent. He also meant Google Search. While I can agree that it is extremely unlikely that some of Google’s technologies were even considered, I don’t think it applys to all of them.

The major one for this point is Google Maps. Before Google Maps came about it was very expensive to obtain space imagery and nobody really knew the benefits of a free mapping interface for all. Then Google jumped in, spent millions on buying the imagery and probably millions again on developing the software for their interface. And since launch, have likely spent many more millions on keeping the service running. And what does Google get out of this? Financial compensation? No. Advertising opportunity? No. The ability to collect information on “places of interest” for any particular person or region – why certainly! You have to ask yourself why Google would even consider spending so much money on a service they’ll never get back. Sure there is Google Earth Pro, but I really doubt this has made any impact on their comings and goings.

Another curious fact is Google’s data collection and how well positioned Google are to collect data on users. I’d be amazed if a product isn’t already in existence for law enforcement to place wiretaps on unsuspecting Internet users. Over 70% of online advertising is controlled by Google, and Google is most certainly the major search engine with all their search competitors not even coming close, when you visit a web page even if it doesn’t have content embedded from Google, Google are in a position to predict sites you visit via referring search results and other methods.

Its well known the NSA has wiretapping operations in San Francisco, San Jose and New York City for Internet exchanges. Its speculated that the NSA simply use prisms to split fibre optic lines into wiretapping equipment. The real problem with this method of wiretapping is sorting through the information and trying to produce relevant data. There is simply too much information. But when you track a user with their own unique ID they’ll regularly inform you about, and you can see most the traffic on the Internet anyway, your capabilities for wiretapping is far greater than the known operations of the NSA.

Then there is the iCloud. In recent weeks there was much Apple hype as the iPhone 4 was released and it featured the iCloud or the ability to store your contact & calendar in an Apple cloud computer. Google has had this on Android since day one. But why?

So what I’m concluding is that Google have a huge focus on data mining. They have a history of developing products at great expense that produce no profits and only enable Google to perform more data mining. Google has the attitude of “trust us, we will do no harm” but this is exactly the same attitude as the government. I really would not be surprised at all if Google were operated by a government, but I would be surprised if Google did not at least have some kind of wiretapping program in place with the NSA. You’d think the NSA or CIA would realize the capabilities of Google, and would have done whatever was necessary to get access, even if that meant breaking the law.