You Can Use a Witty Pop Culture Reference as an Alias, But You Can't Hide

Goofus, Schmoofus. Microsoft asks "Where do you want to go today?" Then Microsoft invests in an investigation service to track your movements and figure out if you're really doing what you said you'd be doing:

IF YOU thought you could protect your privacy on the web by lying about your personal details, think again. In online communities at least, entering fake details such as a bogus name or age may no longer prevent others from working out exactly who you are.

That is the spectre raised by new research conducted by Microsoft. The computing giant is developing software that could accurately guess your name, age, gender and potentially even your location, by analysing telltale patterns in your web browsing history. But experts say the idea is a clear threat to privacy - and may be illegal in some places.

Who plays Gallant to Microsoft's Mephistopheles? Why, "don't be evil" themselves, Google. Sure, they want to amass tons and tons of information on you (most of which you'll fork over willingly because it's convenient -- at least, that's why we do it), but they want to help you:

Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said gathering more personal data was a key way for Google to expand and the company believes that is the logical extension of its stated mission to organise the world’s information.

Asked how Google might look in five years’ time, Mr Schmidt said: “We are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms will get better and we will get better at personalisation.

“The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ ”