Google has a motto, “don’t be evil”. With the acquisition of DoubleClick that they’re trying to pull off, we’d better hope that they’re serious.

The issue here is serious. With DoubleClick in the fold, Google will have an even more comprehensive picture of peoples web surfing habits. The IP address and cookies that will follow individuals around the Net will put into the hands of an essentially unregulated entity an enormous amount of power.

Not that I’m for tons of regulation but let’s understand what we’re dealing with here. Buying habits are only the tip of the iceberg. Medical histories could be correlated to individuals through searches online, financial status inferred as well as numerous other bits of personal information. With web surfing habit logs broken up between several entities the connections are more difficult to make – all that information under one roof places a lot of trust in a corporation whose mandate is to make as much money as possible.

That’s not even considering the consequences when the government taps Google to get access to their database because of the potential value in combating crime.

What could possibly go wrong?