As I found out recently when I got a strange, and at first unintelligible notification in my Gmail inbox, telling me that I my account was at 95% of its capacity, and that I had better do something about it. And, indeed, I was at that spectral threshold, with my inbox holding something like 15,000 messages.

How, you may ask, did I get to this crisis point? Didn’t I ever delete old messages? Well, no – and with that, I was actually following Google’s recommendations, or at least buying into their marketing hype. When they first started the service, Google said that there would never be a need to delete another e-mail message – and I didn’t. Of course, I kept checking how much space I had available, at first – but, it seemed, every few months they kept upping the 2 GB of space I was initially given. Then came the other productivity services – Google Docs, Google Calendar, Picasa, using Gmail as a disk drive/ storage service, inviting yourself from your Gmail account to open other Gmail accounts, etc. I was hooked – Google really was like the golden goose that kept on giving!

But alas, the shine has worn off those golden eggs. When following the “critical message” link Gmail gave me when I neared the limit, Google suggested that I delete messages – or buy disk space, in order to accommodate my growing Google cloud “family” (Google storage space is used for all the company’s services, including Google Docs, Picasa, etc.). The price? Between $5 a year for 20 GB of storage, to $256 for 1 TB of space.

Aha, so that was it all along, Cynical Me said – the Google freebies, the ever-increasing storage space, were nothing more than a “bait and switch” scam to get me hooked, so I would be willing to shell out five bucks for more space! What made matters worse is that mass elimination of messages in Gmail is a bit tricky – unless the messages you want to delete are from the same address, have the same subject, are under a specific label, or have an attachment, you may find yourself either sorting through thousands of messages you want to keep and those you don’t, or having to download close to 8 GB of mail to your computer, so you can use your desktop e-mail programs tools to delete the content you don’t want. Even I, who get indignant when I’m asked to pay for anything (especially “free” services) almost gave up; I was actually reaching for my credit card, when I finally figured out a quick, efficient way to put my account on a diet (I managed to get down to 46% of capacity).

Alright, it’s only $5 – but the whole incident got me thinking. With the economy the way it is, and Google seeking to maintain its attractiveness to investors, a gradual slide by Google from “free” to “fremium” is not out of the question. So many people have Gmail now, that collecting $5 from each one could net Google a pile of money that other companies would have to charge many tens, or even hundreds, of dollars from their far smaller customer base in order to amass. And certainly Google’s $5 storage price is low enough to tempt users who don’t have the time, patience, or technical skills to do a major cleanup of their accounts.

Five dollars is indeed pretty cheap, and the company does have a lot of useful services, but look at it from the consumer’s (ie our) point of view: Google made most of its considerable fortune selling the aggregate information in our searches and e-mail messages, and  some would call Google’s squeezing users and others who are now at its mercy as just plain greedy.

I don’t think “greedy” is a word I’d use in connection with Google – after all, they do provide a lot of beneficial, free services, and they are in business to make money. And I don’t think the day will ever come when Google starts charging onerous fees for its basic services. We may be able to discern the Google future from the current behavior of Israeli banks: The fees charged by banks for the basic services are relatively low, but if you need a special “favor” done – like getting a bank statement from three months ago – expect to get hit with a big bill!

In the same way, Google could start charging you to access archived messages that have attachments larger than a certain size, for example. When you need your data, you need it – and if you need to pay Google to get it, you’ll pay. Apply that logic to other currently free services –  for example, maybe they’ll try to charge businesses for using Google Docs, or allow only “light” personal users free access, you begin to see how a Google ex-post facto monetization runaround can get to become just a bit annoying – and something you might want to try and avoid before it happens. The folks at our local banks, so good at figuring out ways to charge you for “taking care” of your money – meaning that they get to invest your money on their own behalf, and keep all the profits for themselves – can no doubt help Google with creative suggestions on how to stack up the fees, and still allow the company to maintain its “free” services.

If you ask Google (many have) about the possibility of its charging for services, the company’s standard answer is “We have no plans at this time to charge for services” – the key words (to use a phrase Google understands intimately) being “at this time.” Note that I haven’t even mentioned the other possible issues with a total dependence on Google’s (or any other company’s) cloud, like service outages, data erasures, viruses, identity theft, etc. – all well-known issues. There’s no reason why the “backup, backup, backup” philosophy we all learned in Computers 101 shouldn’t apply to on-line, as well as off-line data; “they’ll never let it happen,” whether its data loss, identity theft, or fee-based access, applies – until they actually let it.

My suggestion: Take advantage of “at this time,” and back up your Google cloud data locally. An old 40 GB hard drive (which you may have lying around) will do the job – all you’d need is an external case with a USB connection to turn it into a backup drive. Set up an overnight download to pull your messages from Gmail to your local computer, and archive the data on your storage drive. Or, you can use a program like BackupGoo, which will fetch your Gmail and Google Docs. I know the cloud is the future – and in fact, that future is already here. But backing up your own data will help ensure that the clouds you float on will be the white, fluffy ones – instead of those threatening, dark thunderheads.

Related articles

• Search Google Docs and Google Sites in Gmail (googlesystem.blogspot.com)
• Sync Your Google Docs To Multiple Machines With Insync (makeuseof.com)
• Back To School: Google Docs (inflectovita.com)
• Coming Soon: Google Docs Editing on iPad, Android (technologizer.com)
• Search Google Docs & Gmail Simultaneously with New Labs Feature (readwriteweb.com)

But, thanks to some quick thinking by folks from the town of Kiryat Yam (and a little follow-up by yours truly), at least one of those “little liars” has been shown up for what he really is. Busted! You may have heard the story – how one Thameen Darby is the impetus by Kiryat Yam for a lawsuit against Google.

Darby claimed in a posting to Google Earth that the town was built on the remains of an Arab village, cleared out by Israel after the War of Independence. It was not, Kiryat Yam city fathers (and mothers) say. There was no Ghawarina, at least not on the sand dunes upon which Kiryat Yam was built. And so, officials of the city filed a complaint with police over libel, and plan to sue Google for defamation of character. Being that Google and its software is involved is what makes all the difference.

Google Earth is the modern way to handle geography. Volumes of old-fashioned gazetteers now languish on library shelves, as users who have downloaded the program make use of its basic and advanced features to map the world. Google Earth lets you check out almost every area of the world in detail, viewing 2D maps, 3D satellite imagery, terrain, communities and even specific buildings just by typing a search term into the program. Distances, statistics and information on faraway places that once took half a day at the library to discover are now available in a couple of clicks. Such is the power of the Internet when harnessed by Google.

To extend the usefulness of Google Earth, the program allows users to create “layers” – overlays of data, photos, political concerns, environment data, etc. – on the basic map. For example, you can view farms and plantations around the world that grow “fair trade” produce, which are supposed to fulfill certain basic conditions regarding safe environmental and fair labor practices.

One of the problems with the Internet, as we all know, is that anybody can proffer themselves as an expert on anything and, for the cost (free) of signing up with a blogging site, make their “observations” a part of the greater body of human knowledge, no matter how silly, ridiculous or false.

When it comes to Israel and, by extension, the Jews, despite the denial of those who claim to be “anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic,” the disinformation is endless. According to most of the anti- Israel bloggers, for example, Gaza terrorists missing their marks and hitting open fields “proves” that these are “false flag” attacks being perpetrated by Israel – to give us an “excuse” to conduct a “Holocaust in Gaza.” And, of course, to increase the drama, Israel sometimes hits its own people with these rockets.

Interestingly, many of the links that connect to these sites are from the real anti-Semitic underbelly of the Internet – those sites that scientifically “prove” that the kids on the back of the milk cartons are victims of a blood libel.

Of course, no person in their right mind would take this stuff seriously. But then again, there are a lot of people out there not in their right minds. And as with the “big lie,” constant repetition often leads gullible people to believe that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But when a lie shows up in something like Google Earth, it’s different.

Google Earth is not a common blog; it’s a sophisticated piece of software that the parent company has spent tens of millions of dollars developing. Google is a serious company, and nobody would accuse its (Jewish) inventors of being anti-Semitic or even anti- Israel. So when a “false flag” shows up in a program like GE, it’s far worse than when the same nonsense appears on a plain-vanilla Web site or blog.

Google says Google Earth is an open system and allows any user to post whatever s/he wants, and thus the company should not be held responsible. It seems that Google wants to have it both ways – the freedom to say that it cannot stifle “other voices,” accurate or not, while retaining the aura of authority and respectability Google Earth has among users.

If Google wants its products to become the premier tools of Internet communication, it has a responsibility to ensure that the information provided by its tools is correct. I really do hope Kiryat Yam takes action; there’s a real case here. Imagine a kid in Omaha writing a school report on the refugees of a town that may never have existed, based on Google Earth! Giving the imprimatur of truth to the false charge of expulsion of a civilian population – yep, Kiryat Yam does indeed have a case for defamation of character.

What does Darby have to say about this? “As far as I can know, the Arab Ghawarina locality was in the place depicted”; but if it could be proven that there was no Ghawarina, “I will be quick to reallocate it.” In other words, Kiryat Yam is guilty until proven innocent.

Well, I can help Thameen out a bit – from a site he is quite familiar with himself. A site called “Palestine Remembered,” which purports to catalog the villages within the 1948 borders from which Israel evicted the Arabs, turning them into refugees, and which Darby refers Google Earth users to for more information. It displays a 1946 map of Mandatory Palestine, with all extant villages, cities, railroads, etc. The map bears the signatures of Moshe Dayan and Transjordan’s Ahmed Sudki El Jundi, establishing the “green line” cease-fire lines in 1949. The map was based on an extensive British survey of the territory in 1944 (updated in 1946, a year before the end of the Mandate and two years before Israel was officially established).

Guess what? No Ghawarina! Neither is Kiryat Yam there, for that matter. But since the town was basically a tent on a sand dune (seventh photo down) when first established, it would make sense that it not appear on the map. In fact, the Palestine Remembered page with information on Ghawarina is completely blank – save for the claim that the village did indeed exist, contradicted by that “original source” map on the same site.

Comparing Darby’s Google Earth posts with the British map, I came up with some other questionable claims: villages claimed to have existed that don’t appear on the British map at all (Wadi Qabbani, said to be be outside Netanya on Google Earth); villages that do exist today claimed to have been destroyed (the Arab Ein Hawd). In addition, Darby has “claimed” as Arab villages all sites on the British map that use the term “Khirbet” – a ruin – even if they clearly show up as ruins, wells or springs on the map (numerous examples).

Now, does this mean that Arabs did not flee what was to become Israel when told to by Arab leaders, who promised them the riches of the Jews after the latter were slaughtered (another original source)? No – the Arabs did flee, and they turned into the refugees whose third generation descendants are clamoring for the “right of return.”

But then there was Gush Etzion, Hebron, the Old City of Jerusalem and numerous other Jewish villages, whose residents were forced to flee as well – to say nothing of the Jews of Syria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Turkey and other countries who were forced to flee their homes, abandoning their property (my family still has title deeds to much land in Syria). I hadn’t noticed any information relating to the nakba (catastrophe) conducted by the Arabs against the Jews – you won’t find anything about the 1929 massacre of Hebron Jews on Google Earth.

Of course, the Google people will say that anyone who wishes to catalog the Israeli side of the story is welcome to. But if Google wants its tools to become the vehicles that supply us with the information we need, it has a responsibility – because of its respectability – to ensure that the balance is there, and not leave it up to “volunteers.”

I don’t have time to post blog material and map notations all day long – I have to work for a living, unlike, perhaps, some of these anti-Israel types who sit around writing blogs and posting talk-backs all day long, and apparently are getting an income from somewhere. Where, I wonder? But that is a story for another day.