What Google Knows

The other day I was map googling, looking up Guttenberg, NJ.   And as I should have remembered, it's right on the Hudson River, right north of West New York.  I zoom out for better context, and there's the Upper West Side across the Hudson, with the American Museum of Natural History called out, a major landmark. 

Also called out is Romemu, a Jewish Renewal congregation that meets in a Presbyterian church on West 105th street, and Zabar's, and Ansche Chesed synagogue. 

This strikes me as rather odd.  Zabar's, OK.  Zabar's has been made famous in several New York-loving movies.   It might rate as a tourist attraction.  But Romemu, the shul with the groovy music and meditation?  Not on the radar of your average Googler.  Ansche Chesed?  Even less so.

Strangely coincidental that I've been to

Ansche Chesed recently for a friend's daughter's bat mitzvah. And funny, too, that I briefly considered a bus trip to Romemu with my fellow suburbanite shul members earlier this month.  But I haven't looked either of these places up on Google Maps, that it should remember. 

Then I remember that nothing is coincidental on Google, the Great Correlator.  I must have Googled these two places recently.  Just plain text Googled; not Map or Image or News Googled. Or worse, maybe I just mentioned these places in a Gmail. My own keystrokes put them on the map  -- my map.  Your map has been thoughtfully highlighted with places you've searched on; if they happen to be churches or mosques, probably with little cross and crescent icons instead of little stars of David.

Google now knows our individual places, just as it knows and tells advertisers which display ads to insert among the text columns in our browsers. They ("I was just looking at sergers!") looked like amazing coincidences once, too. 

Consider that the Google/Android smart phone you carry around, beaming location data to all kinds of web application servers, might also tell Google where you go and where you are right now, in addition to places you merely research.  (That's why you may suddenly  get the discount coupon to the store or restaurant  across the street.) 

With my programming, I can't help but think about IBM, filtering Germany's census punchcards for Jewish names at Hitler's request. Even though I know you don't have to be Jewish to be creeped out by what Google knows and keeps learning, from the data crumbs we drop at every turn and click.