Confused by all the talk from Google and Verizon about their plans for protecting net neutrality? Don’t be. All the jargon, press releases, and proposals thrown around by both companies are classic strategies. Confuse the public with a flurry of conflicting hints, public statements and denials while doing your best to control the actions of the agency that might regulate you. The nutshell version of what these two companies are trying to do with the internet and wireless broadband access could be likened to Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone supporting free and open competition of horseless carriages while giving themselves protected monopolies of the yet-to-be defined automobile market. It’s dirty. But would you expect anything else from either company during economic times like this? And don’t get me going on the Google “don’t be evil” thing. We joked back in 2008 that Google’s got you covered top to bottom . And the irony of the words you’re about to read being surrounded by Google ads is not lost on me. But here’s the scary truth: if Facebook’s deceiptful privacy practices and attitude have caused you to be angry or concerned, Google’s attitude should trouble you exponentially more. Most recently, Google’s Eric Schmidt was quoted in this article as saying (in reference to the massive amounts of data compiled about you) that “The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a verified name service for people. Governments will demand it ” (emphasis mine). This is in line with his December 2009 remark that “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Which may be true. But do you want a company like Google or Verizon to be the ones making these decisions? If this cavalier attitude doesn’t trouble you, and if – like many people – you have a Gmail account and use any of Google’s many free tools, try the following, if you haven’t already. Go to your Google Dashboard and see what they’ve been tracking. If you’re a light user of Gmail who just logs in and out to check mail, you’ll see little of interest here. But if you stay logged into your Google accounts all the time, you might be a little disturbed by how much information about you is compiled in one place. And now Google not only wants to know what you HAVE done, they think they can predict what you WILL do. By the way, if they’re so good at predicting the future, this begs the question: how did they not know that Facebook would kick their ass so bad on social networking?