How Much Of Your Life (Online Or Off) Does Google Have Access To?

About a month ago I started using a Droid alongside my existing Windows Mobile phone, the Samsung Saga. I’d been a bit head over heels for Android since I started using it in earnest (when I reviewed the Archos 5 tablet), so I assumed I would like the Droid just as much. And for events like CES, where I’d need to IM with coworkers over Google Talk all day, Android made sense. However, when I first turned it on, the Droid did something all Android phones do that other Android devices don’t: ask me for my Google account information. I tried not putting one in, but the phone insisted.

That initial account is the first and main way your phone and Google communicate with each other to bring you the Android experience. While that’s all well and good, the problem I ran into early on is that my contacts are not all in Gmail; they’re on my computer. I have more than one calendar across more than one account. And the address I use for talking to my friends is different from the one I use for more formal correspondence. Though users can add more than one account to Android, only one gets to sync contacts, calendar and mail. And if you attempt to make your main account a Google Apps for domains address, you still don’t get the calendar.

It struck me that, in creating this system, Google assumed that all the information I’d need for my phone already existed in my Google account. They assumed that I’d trusted Google with a wealth of information. They also assumed that I prefer to live in the cloud and not keep any of this info stored on my computer at home or at work.

I’m wondering if these assumptions reflect badly on Google or on me?

I download all of my personal e-mail to Thunderbird via POP mail, even my Gmail. My work e-mail syncs to Thunderbird via IMAP. In both cases, I keep e-mail addresses and phone numbers in Thunderbird’s contacts, not the one in my Google account. I can sync these contacts, along with all of my calendars, to my Windows Mobile-based Saga with ActiveSync (with a little help from BirdieSync). I can’t do it this way with Android, which means I either have to put all of my contacts into the Google account or not have access to them from the Droid.

Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I don’t want to hand over that much data to any one service, or even to the cloud in general. I often feel that Google watches over too much of my online life. I use their browser, their search engine, their e-mail service and their chat. With Android, they want my contacts, my schedule, and, if I want to purchase an app, my credit card number in Google Checkout.

And now Google wants all of my social network connections and communications for Buzz. Again, the assumption is that the people I would buzz via some sort of Twitter-like service will all be swirling around in my Google account somehow. Or, if they aren’t now, they will be soon, right?

The question of whether Google Buzz will kill Twitter or Facebook or any social networking service may not lie in how many features it has or doesn’t have, but how much control the user keeps and the service demands. The people I want to interact with on Twitter may not be the kind of people I want anywhere near my e-mail address. And just because I use one Gmail account more than others doesn’t mean I want a public profile associated with it.

It’s really nice that Google wants to be the center of my online life in order to make that life easier. Still, I’d prefer to keep some bits of data to myself. If that means I’ll have to hoe a hard row and deal with Windows Mobile, I’ll take that as an acceptable penance.

How much data have you entrusted to Google? Can you name all the services you use both on your computer and your phone? Do you ever feel it’s too much or does the convenience outweigh all of those concerns?