Google calls these POI’s their “Favorite Places on Google”, and could include restaurants, shops, bars and hotels. Their logic is that most people decide what business to use based on user feedback and would like to access this whilst browsing a menu or looking at a pricelist in a shop window.

This could be very handy, I can see myself now, staggering down the road after a boozy night, getting recommendations on which fried chicken shop to choose on Old Street; FCKF, Dallas Chicken & Ribs or Chiken Cottage, hmmm thanks Google!

Yesterday, the U.S. Government federal chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, launched a new website called Apps.gov that enabled the purchase and implementation of cloud computing services for government departments for cost cutting/energy saving.

Google’s founder, Sergey Brin, was so excited about it that he drove all the way to the launch to announce that he would dedicate vast chunks of Google’s servers to enable the Obama administration to achieve it’s goal of modernizing the government’s information technology systems.

Just in the same way the relationship between church and the state in the UK is slightly dubious, with the head of state also being the head of the Church of England. The same could be said about the new relationship in the U.S. between Google and their government.

What Google will get out of this, in affect sale of Government data, is a scary thought for the population of the states. While cloud computing has it’s benefits for simple low level information, the fact that it may get it’s hands on medical records and tax information, is scary.

So now it knows where you live, that you have persistant diarrhea, and that you may be interested in not paying your taxes. Great.

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