Is Google Controlled by the Pentagon?   10/10/2005 - 896 views, 1 Comment

Google is being controlled by the Pentagon! That was the astonishing message I saw on sign after sign, poster after poster, yesterday while strolling around my alma mater, Stanford. Google’s alma mater too, come to think of it.

So far I can find no evidence that Google is controlled by anyone other than its board, its investors, and, maybe, its founders.

An extensive search to uncover this conspiracy theory (or hey, this conspiracy - just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t out to get you) has yielded exactly nothing, other than a rather dire prophecy by someone who posts under the username of “Mimic” who asserts that “He who controls Google, controls the world.” But even there, no evidence that the “he” who controls Google is the Pentagon.

In fact, quite to the contrary, there have been concerns expressed that Google represents a risk to the Pentagon, as Google Earth allows anyone, even bad guys, to pinpoint where exactly “points of interest” such as the Pentagon are (even though, you know, the Pentagon isn’t exactly hard to find).

Perhaps it’s all just really well covered up. Or, perhaps its another one of those wacky Stanford social engineering experiments.