Writing for earthweb.com in 2009, Mike Elgan made a very astute comment:

Who’s Google’s customer? You? Really? When’s the last time you paid Google for anything?

Not that it’s always a bad thing, but Google’s entire business model is based on selling information about you (what you like, what you search for, who you email, where you are, etc) to advertisers. Google makes some of the best internet-based products the world has ever seen, and they give most of them away for free. In reality, they are an advertising company that happens to have the world’s best internet company to sell their wares. Not a bad way to do it, really.

However, keep in mind that Google doesn’t make products for you to use. The information they harvest about you and 900 million of your closest friends is their product. Be careful what you willingly tell them, just as you are careful about everything that you post online ever, right?

Full disclaimer: My email domain lives on a Google Apps For My Domain account, as does my calendar and a bunch of other tools I use every day to get by in this digital life. And because of this, I can’t use the New Hotness, Google+, which has made me slightly bitter, as I’d like to see what they have to offer.

UPDATE: I’m in, and it’s actually pretty good.