Subtle walls

Responding to a post by Google's Matt Cutts on the open aspects of Google's strategy regarding personal information, Nic Carr ponders the subtler aspects of information "lockin":

"As we consolidate more of our personal data into a single company's databases - whether it's Google or another firm - how 'easy' is it, really, to withdraw our information? The answer is: It's not easy at all.

"In a comment on Cutts's post, Philipp Lenssen gets at this issue:

I agree that Google is rather open in these regards and allows you to export a lot. One thing to remember though is that as soon as Google products cross-integrate — e.g. a link from Gmail to add an event to Google Calendar — the costs for users of switching away are increased for any single product. As a practical example, let’s say I love Gmail and I hate Google Calendar, so I want to move to competitor Acme Calendar. Great, you guys offer exporting functionality for my events, so I’ll quickly move them from Acme. But you guys don’t allow me to set my preferred Gmail calendar integration software… so now I end up with a somewhat broken Gmail feature. This is not at all alarming on this scale, but it can be a problem for users down the road when Google heavily increases cross-integration (Google Checkout is being pushed in search result today, for example, cross-integrating another two theoretically 'loosely coupled' services)."

In terms of identity, Google is effectively encouraging me to put together as many fragments as possible of my online personae within the Google walled garden, reassuring me all the while: "look, you're free to take any or all of your personae fragments and skiddaddle any time!" However, what Google are not enabling me to do is to embody my online identity in "small pieces loosely joined", where some of those pieces may be entrusted to Google but others to other service providers. They could, easily, but that would hit profits.

Identity lock-in. MySpace, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google are all at it. The telcos are at it and the retailers are at it. The government are at it. The marketing messages may be changing, but the commercial (and political) realities are still very much entrenched in this Bad Business.