Google's Web Accelerator, released yesterday, has stirred up a small storm of angst about privacy, security and the surveillance society. Counterintuitively, this firestorm of controversy underscores my conclusion that GWA is part of a major change in the architecture of the Web that is changing the rules of the media world.

First the issues:

1. Because Google is caching pages on their servers, they now have visibility to sites that aren't publically accessible (protected by a login, for example). These pages were never indexed by Google before, but now their contents are on Google servers. Passwords and personally identifiable information may be captured.

2. Some users are reporting that cached results served by Google are actually unique pages created for other users. See this post on the Google Group for GWA:

Google states this WA will not cache sites protected by HTTPS, but many private members-only sites only use HTTPS to protect their login forms. Once you are logged in, you are using an HTTP connection to reduce the load on their CPUs...These sites are now at risk to being cached by Google's WA, and apparantly, served to other users....

I'm less concerned about large-scale privacy issues and with Google having my data than I am that a friend will inevitably see a journal page I'd rather not because Google's cached it and then inadvertently served my private information up on a plate to them.

3. Under the Patriot Act, the federal government has ready access to Google's information on your surfing habits and content, with no subpoena or disclosure required. From a long thread on Slashdot:

Google say they will do no evil. Great, and I trust that.

But what I also trust is that they will open their doors and computers very wide to the first FBI agent with a supboena, especially with the full weight of The Patriot Act.

Judges are handing wiretapping orders out like confetti, so you need to consider that any information held by any company belongs to the government at any time. All your base belong to us. And what's even scarier is that no-one is allowed to talk about it - all requests for info come with gag orders.

I'd be willing to bet that Google have already been approached for information. What i'd like to know is what sort of data mining expertise the FBI is gathering in preparation for getting their hands on all googles [sic] files.

These are serious issues for a Google investor because it's likely Google will be spending more time and money in court, and with publicity like this, governments worldwide are likely to restrain Google's freedom of movement.

Counterintuitive conclusion:

After the Gmail hysteria, Google certainly anticipated the controversy and bad publicity that GWA would trigger. So there must be more to this than just speeding up the browsing experience by a few seconds. I'm still betting that GWA is one more piece of the Google Grid, which would be a Much Bigger Deal.