[Wed Apr 28 12:07:03 CEST 2010]

Computer World published a few days ago an interesting piece titled Is Google the new Rome? about the legal implications of cloud computing. The piece does make for a fascinating read:

In some ways, Google is a digital Rome. Instead of extending roads to connect its empire, it builds data centers worldwide and challenges local rule not with swords, but with tools and information.

It is a company that probes the perimeters of censorship in China and tests the limits of privacy laws in Europe, sometimes with consequence, as it expands its cloud computing empire.

On Monday [April 19], Google received a letter from 10 nations, including Canada, France and Britain, telling the company that the "privacy rights of the world's citizens are being forgotten as Google rolls out new technological applications."

However, Google answered its challenges on Tuesday by telling of the universal right of "free expression" and announcing a new tool detailing the requests and orders it receives nation by nation for data and content removal.

Google's Rome-like worldview extends to how it will treat the location of customer data. Google is not offering US businesses any specific assurance that their data will be stored in a US-based data center.

It is making an exception for government customers, such as the city of Los Angeles, which, as part of its contract to move its 30,000 users over to Google Apps, will have its data housed in Google's US-based data centers.

Now, disregarding for a momento the US-centric tone of the article (more on that later), what I find fascinating is the comparison between Google's cloud computing business and the old Rome, for the California-based company truly is becoming some sort of autonomous behemoth with its own personality, its own strategies (and even policies) capable to stand up to powerful nation-states, as we recently saw in their dispute with the Chinese government. I still think that that particular standoff will end up with Google lowering their heads and accepting the conditions imposed by China. However, it has become obvious that companies such as Google or Microsoft are more than capable of defending their own interests in the international scene without much aid from their governments. In that sense, it would seem as if we are quickly approaching the world portrayed by the cyberpunks a couple of decades ago, where large corporations compete against nation-states (or whatever remains of them) on a leveled playing field. As the author says, Google's dominance and spread throughout the world does remind us of the old Rome, although replacing the swords with software and information.

But why did I say above that the overall tone of the article is quite US-centric? Because it seems to be imbued with the traditional notion, so popular in the US, that anything American is better and, above all, a clear expression of individual freedom, as opposed to what everybody else stands for (yeah, especially those annoying Europeans). I mean, how come that allowing corporations to freely move their data (i.e., their customer's data, let's not forget that) wherever they please (i.e., to whichever country offers the least guarantees to their customers and the most to themselves) is a synonym of liberty, and protecting the citizens' privacy not only against their governments but also against the corporations is "socialist"? Even more to the point, why should Google (or anybody else, for that matter) have a right to impose the US national legislation, habits and mores on everybody else? Americans like to laugh at the French when they complain about "American cultural imperialism", but in this case it is a clear case of that. Heck, even the author of the article compares it with the old Rome. How do you call that? {link to this story}