Has Google let the genie out of the bottle?

I think we all know this: Google Loves Data. They want all of our data, every last bit of it. They live for data. They want to touch it, caress it, sift it, search it, organize it, categorize it, and monetize it. They are building data center after data center to store and serve it all.

Let's just assume I'm right here. And let's assume some of us don't really want all our data on Google, and don't fully trust Google.

Enter Google Gears (and similar solutions like Java DB). Let's assume that client-side storage gets very popular, and everyone now a local database on their machine. Combine this with iTunes, which comes with Bonjour, which uses DNS Service Discovery, an IETF standard DNS-based auto-discovery service.

The consequences haven't escaped me, nor have they escaped Laurence Rozier or Frank Sommers

These are enabling technologies on a majority of people's machines that would allow people to build and use massive, secure, Internet-based data collaboration applications and services without ever putting a single byte of their data on Google's servers.

Ouch.