I’m currently reading The Google Story. I don’t read many business books as they tend to be really dry. But so far it’s been an interesting read. Larry Page and Sergey Brin certainly do things differently. And it’s bought them a lot of success (and money!).

But it’s only really tonight that I’ve realised how dependent I’ve become on them. I read a great post on Fortuitous a few months ago about all the different sites and widgets available that allow you to do stuff via your browser, and not using software on your PC. And slowly I’ve migrated to doing just that. And they mostly seem to be powered by Google…

I use Google Docs to collaboratively work on planning a project with my mate Steve. My friend Paddy just emailed me (to my Gmail account, natch) a spreadsheet and I just opened it up in Google Spreadsheet rather than download it to my destop and then open it in Excel. I use Google Homepage as my, erm, homepage and I have my news/biz/sport RSS feeds piped straight into that, as well as the brilliant Google Calendar (which I’ve become dependent upon). And obviously I search God knows how many times a day through my homepage. And on top of all this I use Google Browser, which allows me to log on to my PC or my desktop and have all the settings, bookmarks, tabs and windows waiting for me just as I left them on the other machine. And to cap it all off, this blog is powered by Blogger – owned by Google!

Anyway, it’s a good job Google don’t do banking otherwise they would have me completely and utterly in their pocket.

The thing is should I be worried about one organisation having such access to me and my life? I think I’m happier with them as a company than most of the other major online “players”. Having read the book I feel comfortable with their business culture, and their attitude. And although there have been fears about privacy with them in the past, I’m not sure that they’re any worse on that front either.

Is it dangerous to have all my eggs in one basket, or should I be spreading it around?

Edit – Would you believe that just as i was posting this I’ve had a free text message from Google Calendar reminding me of a meeting I have tomorrow…