Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, has a history of saying frightening things about his company’s power. He was once quoted as saying: ‘If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” He even recently suggested that young people might change their names in future to escape their Google-able past. (Google Photos: The glorious history of the Google Doodle)
However, he may now have taken his ‘honesty’ about his company to terrifying new levels. When talking to The Atlantic about the possibility of a Google implant- a chip under the skin that would track you and provide easy web access- he said, “Google’s policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.” Yes, but if you’re up to the line, you’re still creepy Mr Schmidt.
He was not necessarily in favor of an implant, but he did say: “With your permission you give us more information about you, your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches … We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less guess what you’re thinking about.”