numnum - 11:04 pm on Jan 26, 2012 (gmt 0)

Woo-hoo, I've made it to the Webmaster World home page. Now, where to begin in responding to my comrades' concerns, queries and quips?

I'm excited about Google's new required security feature. Each time you want to log in to your Google accounts, you'll need to prick your finger on a small device that plugs into your computer's USB port. Google will match the sequence of the DNA found in your blood to that which they have on record (recorded when you create your account starting the 1st of May), if there is a match you are granted access.

Blood samples? Far too messy. And who needs them, anyway? A retinal scan will do the trick just fine. Clean and painless. What's more, you'll already be staring bug-eyed straight at your display's built-in scanner (a cool feature, by the way), and so you'll miss nary a keystoke. (Think you'll be long gone before this ever comes to pass? Truth be told, part of me hopes that I will be. Dystopia is just around the corner.)

Now, if I can just submit a phony birthday, all will be well, and I will finally sign-up, without fear that my REAL birthday will be broadcast to identity thieves.

If you're an Adsense publisher in the U.S., Google has your SSN and hence knows your approximate DOB. (I don't recall whether the Adsense application provides a required field for DOB.) Attempt to register a G+ account using a false DOB, and you'll risk losing your Adsense account and income. But of course that can only help clean out the cesspool and open up more slots near the top of the SERPs for those trusted brands. (Corporations are people, too -- and they have birthdays, just like human webmasters.)

Insofar as business is concerned it really wouldn't make one jot of difference to our companies if Google never existed, after 170+ years we're pretty well known and we also know all the major players in our industry:-)

Your username is HuskyPup and you're in a 170-year-old industry? Aha! Fur trading! Now, supply your DOB and I'll really have your number. Just give me 10 minutes, a broadband connection, and a dog sled.

Though I kid, my intent is serious: to do my little part in raising awareness of the longer term implications of these policies. Oh, and I just caught a CNBC interview with E. Schmidt from Davos, Switzerland. He talked a lot about "solving problems" and "providing solutions."