Google CEO Eric Schmidt “fears that too much information is shared online, and predicts that people will one day change their name and reinvent themselves in order to escape their digital past.” Not a very surprising observation given the explosive growth of Social Media, and proliferation of information helps and hurts trial lawyers. There were an estimated 1.5 trillion text messages in 2009 and estimated 210 billion emails each day… but how many in 2010 and thereafter? If people change their identities our ability to find evidence and witnesses will change, but finding meaningful evidence may be the greater challenge given the volume of electronic information which continues to grow a phenomenal pace.
Google Expands its Retail Presence
Google recently acquired like.com which increases its Products engine to sell retail products whether its clothing, computers, or snacks. Like.com founded in 2004 provides a “visual search engine focused on shoes, clothes, jewelry and décor,” and also owns covet.com which is a personal shopper from hundreds of online stores. Covet.com offers Stylyzer to learn about the shopper’s preferences. Since Google retains all search engine queries for 18 months one might wonder how Google will marry retail shopping preferences into search engine results.