IT departments were created as a means of collecting information and because most people in the business don’t understand IT, they have been left to get along with it.
Now we are faced with the old accountancy argument that google (or similar) can do the work cheaper and better.
Look at China – outsourcing without consequences. Outsourcing works for cheaper labor costs, for processes that actually work (IT depts spend their time fixing IT problems, googls won’t touch this).
Companies will move to outsourcing but they will often not look at issues of privacy, robustness of data, overall cost/benefit analysis to the company etc.
I’ve been working with companies trying to find out what their subcontractors actually do, with google etc, this analysis will be all but impossible.