Discussion on:

Google Now: The future of big data and Android's game-changer

This is creepy. There is no amount of benefit that justifies this much snooping on my life.

Is not that the cellphone is stalking you, recording what are you doing, where you are, where you will go, at what time you are driving to work at what time you return, what routes you take, at what store you commnonly stop in the way to buy some groceries and later send all this information to a server somewhere .....

I agree with the creepy angle. It's worse when you consider that FISA which Obama renewed and enhanced Christmas 2012. The US intellegance agencies can access and harvest any non-US citizen's data that happens to be stored on US company servers without warrant, notice or probable cause.

On the other hand, Google is already using all your Android related and other Google service hosted data. They already know what Google Now knows because it helps them sell ads better. The user, who's data it actually is, may as well enjoy some of the benefits the hosting company already enjoys.

If your using Android OS then using Google Now really doesn't increase your exposure.

I would almost pay for this. I currently have apps that search my email looking for things like flight itineraries to my supposedly "smart" phone can tell me about my flight without me having to explicitly first tell my phone.

The main thrust of big data is layering different data sources on top of each other to gain new insights. Most often, this means taking your traditional internal data warehouse and layering public data sources like data.gov or social media data (mining it for sentiment analysis, for example) and the combination of the two reveals news insights. In the case of Google Now, it is clearly taking multiple data sources and combining them together in new ways to provide valuable information.

For more on big data, see our joint TechRepublic/ZDNet special feature on the topic:
http://www.zdnet.com/topic-making-the-business-case-for-big-data/

I was under the (probably mistaken) impression that the term big data originated in the physics community when they needed to deal with experiments that produce petabytes of data per second or more. Volumes that simply couldn't be processed and analysed even by the biggest fastest systems of the time.

To me, it it's not BIG unless it's bigger than normal transactional data, even if you are Boeing and it's your BOM database! For example, looking at several decades of data rather than just the usual 12 to 24 months.

.. is another term that changes meaning depending on the given context.

When your talking about storage, big data is indeed petabyte databases. It also easily refers to analysis of petabyte data sets or data sets combined from multiple sources. Neither usage is incorrect really.

The only way I've heard Big Data used is in the marketing context; layering social media info, public data and private data. As Hiner's example, using your GPS location with public DOT travel estimates and the user's specific travel patterns. Old-school examples would be the fact that many people buy a new car within 6 months of buying a new house, so market cars to people who've taken out a mortgage in the past few months.

I'm not really interested in "marketing" defining IT terminology. Or, for that matter, anything marketing tells me. I'm interested in the science, math, and technology primarily.

I love Google Now, and it makes me wish I had a more travel-heavy lifestyle because I think it'd be absolutely brilliant then.

I have absolutely no interest in being "that connected". Barely enuf time now to do "real work" and spend quality time with family or "just chill". As my screen-name indicates, the reason why I "farm too" is to get away from it. I could garden, hang in a bar, play at other hobbies, or whatever, but I'm not so insecure or egotistical that I have to be "interacting with everything" all the time. ( And if I don't really need it, I'm not buying it ! )

And seriously, how much easier have we made the jobs of criminals everywhere. Now there won't just be lists of stolen credit card numbers they can buy, they can let them know where you are, if there's anything valuable arriving in a package while you're at work, and anything the government ever wants to know about an individual without a warrant will be right there. A one stop shop. Way too creepy for me. I like my privacy.

"Google was digging into my search history and email when I hadnt explicitly given it permission to do so."

And you were only "miffed"? This article smells like a paid endorsement.

Does anyone want ANYBODY digging into their search history and email for any reason? This article would make you think it's a small matter. It's not.

I don't need Google or any other supercorporation "gaining new insights" into me. This more than just creepy, it's alarming. Sorry to see Jason is now such a gung hu promoter of zero privacy.

But how would you know what I or anyone else might want? Or our reasons for it?

If I was an insurance broker, I sure would like to know which ones of my customers spent time in a hospital in the months before they subscribed health coverage... Or who in my circles came very suddenly to a stop on the freeway while riding on the fast lane between two exits... Do you think we can expect that kind of service soon ? I just can't wait...

Hi Jason. Nice post. I am amazed by the number of features that Google offer. Am sure there are many people out there who love to keep track of various types of info and data about travel and sports. And these features look absolutely in sync with what most people would like to have at their disposal.

On a recent trip it displayed cards with my electronic boarding passes. Scanned my phone and I'm on the plane. Kept me updated on flight status as well.

Let's me know when I'm leaving work or home if traffic is bad on my route. This is the promise of the electronic personal assistant I've been waiting for starting to come to fruition.

Great article Jason.
Thanks

A OS that invades your privacy and have a lot of security problems (170.000 viruses running on Android at the end of 2012) is a very problematic combination.
Imagine if all personal information that could leak from your device if a virus invade your phone and steal everything, mostly if the device, against your will, already had combined your bank data, personal preferences, and all of your "big data"