The Tuesday, May 9th meeting of the Rocky Mountain
Internet Users Group (RMIUG) will discuss "Google: The
New Big Brother?"

I don't think I need to tell you how important Google
is to the Internet.

While searching for information on the Internet has
always been important function of Internet
grand-daddies like Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN, Google made
it into an art. Lightening quick and amazingly
accurate, Google has made most Internet users question
what they did before it existed.

And, the numbers show their success (statistics from
Neilson//Netratings as of December 2005):
* 48.8% of the search share market (up 5.7% from the
previous year)
* Nearly 2.5 billion searches in December 2005 alone
(up 75% from the previous year)
* Nearly 80 million unique visitors a month (in the US
alone!)
And let's not forget their $125 Billion market
capitalization.

Let's be frank: Who doesn't Google?

While their dominance is the stuff of lore, is it also
dangerous?

If you consider that search engines are most users'
window onto the Internet, you must remember that while
windows let you look out, they also let others look
in. And, Google is most certainly looking in:
* Google keeps statistics on all searches done on
their system. Called the Zeitgeist
(http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist_monthly.html),
Google regularly publishes statistics on what the most
popular searches were by month.
* With Google's email service, GMail, Google indexes
all of your email and serves up ads that are
contextually related to your emails.
* Google provides a web a free service that allows
Webmasters track statistics about every click on every
website including purchases.

So while most Web users can't live without Google,
should we be concerned that they are becoming a Big
Brother?

To help us explore this topic, RMIUG will bring in
following speaker:

Dave Taylor (taylor@...) is the founder of
Intuitive Systems, an executive management and
communications consultancy. He's been involved with
the Internet for over 25 years, including a stint as a
research scientist at HP's R&D Labs and another as
senior editor of Advanced Systems magazine. He's
written 20 books including the best-selling "Wicked
Cool Shell Scripts", "Creating Cool Web Sites" and
"Learning Unix for Mac OS X." Dave will draw upon his
most recent book, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to
Growing Your Business with Google," to give us some
great depth about Google, its systems, and its
practices.

Dave will also be giving away a free copy of "The
Complete Idiot's Guide to Growing Your Business with
Google."

Links:
Google: http://www.google.com
Intuitive Systems: http://www.intuitive.com
Ask Dave Taylor: http://www.askdavetaylor.com

The meeting is Tuesday, May 9th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm
(with optional 6:30 pm start for refreshments and
informal networking). The meeting will be held at The
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at
1850 Table Mesa Drive in Boulder. To get to NCAR from
the Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93), take
Table Mesa Drive west towards the mountains for
approximately 2.5 miles into the foothills. NCAR is at
the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving
directions, go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/),
click on Driving Directions, enter your starting
address, NCAR's address, and voila! Park in the NCAR
lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to point
you to meeting, which is held in the main auditorium,
right off the lobby. The meeting is free and open to
the public, but we may pass the hat to help defray
expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is
usually enough room to accommodate all attendees, but
it's impossible for us to predict how many people will
show up for any given meeting. Seating is always on a
first-come, first serve basis, and in the event of
more attendees than seats, we won't be able to admit
additional people into the auditorium after all seats
are filled.

Thanks to our three sponsors who help make RMIUG
meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides
Creative and Technical talent for Web, Interactive
Media, Marketing Communications and Software
Development projects, is the sponsor of food and
beverages for RMIUG meetings.
ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based
software company that provides semi-custom web-based
applications, sponsors the RMIUG meeting minutes.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides
marketing project management, marketing communications
consulting, and web content development is the AV
sponsor for RMIUG.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring
Internet-related Product information, brochures, and
business cards which will be displayed on an
information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, see
http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html. You can also reach
the RMIUG "Executive" Committee at
rmiug-comm@.... Our web site is at
http://www.rmiug.org/


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Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are
their guests. NCAR has security regulations in effect
that we must follow in order to use the facility. If
any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these simple
regulations, I would ask that he or she not attend and
instead read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be
followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing
ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy
are expected when dealing with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this
policy, please contact me directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
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