Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google had this to say about the future of search:

“Ultimately, search is not just the web but literally all of your information – your email, the things you care about, with your permission – this is personal search, for you and only for you.”

“We can suggest what you should do next, what you care about. Imagine: We know where you are, we know what you like.”

“A near-term future in which you don’t forget anything, because the computer remembers. You’re never lost.”

Shocked? I’m not. Readers of Omniveillance will recall that this has been Google’s goal for quite some time. Here is what I wrote nearly 2 years ago:

In an interview conducted by the Financial Times, Google CEO Eric Schmidt admitted the company’s future goal is to organize people’s daily lives.139 Specifically, Schmidt augured that one day “users [will] . . . be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ ” and Google would be able to answer those questions.140 Udi Manber, Google’s Vice President of Engineering in charge of Google Search, reaffirmed this sentiment, and posited that Google has “to understand as much as we can user intent and give [users] the answer they need.”141 Mr. Schmidt acknowledged that the primary obstacle to this goal is not the technology, but the lack of information Google possesses about people.142 Talking to journalists in London, Mr. Schmidt stated, “We cannot even answer the most basic questions because we don’t know enough about you. That is the most important aspect of Google’s expansion.”143