Google wants to make sure that every part of your life happens under their searchlight. They don’t want you to use desktop apps; they want you to use apps on the Web, so that they can observe how much time you spend at each task, and get at least a vague sense of the data you work with.
They want you to use their mail service, so that they can better understand your relationships with other people.
They don’t want you to send data to your phone via a secure, user-controlled cable. They want you to do it through the Internet, so that they can note the sort of music you like, the locations you’re interested in, the places you’ve been.
They also want to be able to “push” apps onto your device that you might not want, and let websites push data into specific apps. They want the ads they push onto your device to have an unusually close level of interaction with your phone hardware and the data therein.
And Google wants to know what you do in your living room. What shows do you watch? What shows do you record? Once you’ve recorded them, how long until you watch them? Do you watch them all the way through? Did you pause during a commercial? What did you do during that pause? Did you visit a site or search for a keyword? What was that keyword?
Very interesting take from the Google I/O conference.