Ubiquitous Information

Google has made a new "privacy announcement" (outlined here in the Washington Post) stating that users can now expect to have data about their usage of all Google products tracked. Previously, a user's search usage and a user's usage of other Google products would have been tracked separately. Now, Google is stating that the data collected from using the separate Google products (search, GMail, YouTube, ...) will be aggregated to yield a better pool of information. Google is not giving users the ability to opt out of this data collection.

What benefit does this have for Google? What benefit does this have for the user? What drawbacks might it have for both?

Despite sensationalistic articles or headlines, data collection is everywhere; it is ubiquitous. What kind of data might Amazon collect about a user, for instance? When one speaks of ubiquitous computing, though, one usually means the computers and the network being everywhere rather than the data collection. Smart phones are a sign that computers are becoming ubiquitous since one can be online with them almost anywhere or anytime. Another way in which computers can be ubiquitous is in the field of sensor informatics.  Sensors collect data, and when integrated with a computer, they can store this data or transmit it over a network. If sensors are ubiquitous, they will be sensors everywhere. What applications of this can you think of? Using ubiquitous hardware to solve problems with this computing power is informatics--sensor informatics. Wired has one sample application which may be viable soon.