Legal Research

The U.S. Government, Brought To You By Google [UPDATED]

Interesting article in today’s Washington Post about how Google has set up a Washington DC office in order to evangelize government agencies about the merits of Google Maps, Gmail, and Google Docs.  The article mentions how Vivek Kundra, Chief Technology Officer of the District of Columbia is in the process of switching all 38,000 employees over to Gmail.  (Here’s a related article from PC World with more info.)  The WP article gives a shout-out to Gmail’s “built-in spam filters and virus scanners [which cut] down on server maintenance costs.”

I’m still using Yahoo Mail as my primary non-work account.  This is partly inertia — I’ve been with them for like 10 years — and partly paranoia — I don’t want all my eggs in Google’s basket.  But Gmail has many useful features.  Here are two of my favorites: encryption and remote sign out.

This all ties into a book I’m currently reading, which I’ve promised to review soon: The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr.

Update, 12:50 pm - Software guru Richard Stallman says you’re stupid if you use cloud computing apps.  You gonna take that lying down?

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on September 29, 2008 (boomark / email).