I think you are right in today's editorial about a lack of international comprehension of the impact of Google's rapid advances in the geospatial world. I have one generic comment related to this, but applicable to many other threads at DirectionsMag.com and elsewhere.

I think the time has come for people to accept the brutal reality that any expectation of privacy (online) is a fallacy, a mirage that only the foolish still maintain a hope of keeping secure. The traditional paranoia about "Big Brother" is probably the least of everyone's concerns, in fact, the biggest threat that most consumers face is their own carelessness and ignorance in the environment of professional scammers and "phishers", among other nefarious elements that prey upon the online/offline communities.

For every advance in technology (wireless GPS, Google's portal, mobile phone GPS with cameras, etc.) there will be hundreds of potential criminal applications for every legitimate beneficial application of the technology. This is simply the nature of the world in which we live, and for those that still feel there is a chance at utopia, then, those people should unplug. The most powerful and successful software company in world history (Microsoft) is unable to thwart the constant adaptations of various criminal elements to exploit Microsoft's technology in ever increasingly innovative ways.

Plain and simple, if you are online, and unless you are prepared to go to rather extreme measures to remain anonymous, then you are and will continue to be subjected to obvious and subtle forms of scrutiny, and yes, this is in principle, an invasion of privacy. This is unfortunately an antiquated concept, because to have your privacy invaded presumes a reasonable expectation that things believed to be private are actually being kept private. Things could not be any further from the truth, and it is time people learned to simply accept that reality and deal with it. It is not possible to put the genie back in the bottle.

Anthony Quartararo