How Google is becoming an extension of your mind

Google is a lot more than just a search engine. Now an omnipresent digital assistant, using the search business' cash to transform itself into something much broader than just a place to point your browser when asking for directions on the Internet.

Google can be capable of diagnosing illness early based on a person's alertness, skin-temperature. Capable of translating an incomprehensible emergency announcement while you're riding a train in foreign country. Or Google steering your investment portfolio away from a Ponzi scheme.

Google becomes a part of you. You sharing photos with friends on the go.Or Google taking over your car when it concludes based on your steering response time and blink rate that you're no longer fit to drive. Or your Google glasses automatically beaming audio and video to the police when you say a phrase that indicates you're being mugged.

For a Google-augmented life, you must grant the Googlebot unprecedented privileges to monitor your personal information and behavior. What medicine do you take? What ads did you just glance at while walking by the bus stop? What's your credit card number? And as Google works to integrate social data into its services, you'll have to decide how much you'll share with your contacts' Google accounts -- and the best way to ask them to share their data with your Google account.