Google ‘Knows When You’re Home’

Prison Planet: Google makes Big Brother look like an amateur. Google has devised yet another ingenious way of convincing people to hand over their real-time location data, by offering location specific “reminders” as part of its Google Now feature. During the company’s Google I/O conference for developers in San Francisco yesterday, it was announced that Google Now, the voice-recognizing search product, will soon be available on desktop computers and will network seamlessly with mobile devices.

Google Now enables users to perform Internet searches by speaking to their computers, but it also allows Google to provide both time and location specific reminders that function via GPS technology.

“For example, you can, from your desktop at work, tell Google Now: “Remind me to take out the garbage when I get home,” and when it senses through your smartphone that you are back at home, Google Now will send you a reminder,” reports Business Insider. The program will also access your calendar to give you warnings about heavy traffic before you set off on your journey. Another Google Now feature will provide recommendations on activities to do based on your current location and previous habits. A new Google tool called Activity Recognition will also know if you’re “walking, driving, or biking.”

If all this sounds completely invasive, Orwellian and ultimately annoying as hell, then that’s because it is – not for the transhumanist trendies who don’t find Eric Schmidt’s dream of swallowing nano-bots every morning and sending his robotic clone to social functions completely horrific – but for those of us who still want to retain some essence of privacy and basic humanity...read more>>>...