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Over the weekend, Google began trying out a new product called Google Profiles. The move seems prompted by jealousy over all the buzz Facebook is getting. And sure enough, Google may just have come up with something creepier than Facebook's Beacon.

Unlike Facebook, where you have to actively add friends, Google Profiles tries to figure out who its users' friends are. One way it will do that is by deeming everyone you exchange messages with a friend. This can have obnoxious consequences.

Your new Google friends, to use VentureBeat's example, can tell which stories you're sharing with other users in Google Reader. Most of us talk to our frenemies as much as our friends over IM and email. What better way to taunt the competition? This social nuance, of course, is lost on Google. Ah, if only life were as simple as it is in the rainbow-colored halls of the Googleplex.