Thanks to Google search and Gmail's ever-expanding capacity, I don't have to remember much of anything anymore beyond a unique string or group of words to call up facts, dates and important documents. Convenient? Yes, as long as my laptop is nearby. But is my brain rewiring itself to rely on Web-based memory? That's what Matt Asay is arguing on News.com. Asay highlights quotes from Nick Carr's article in The Atlantic which suggest our malleable mind is increasingly dependent on the Internet for cognition. Does that make Google the sizzling pan, and our brains fresh eggs ready for a fryup? I'm not so sure.

CNET blogger and supposed open-source expert Matt Asay tragically misreads Google's terms of service for Google Apps. An admittedly scary patch of legalese suggests, to Asay, that Google will take all of your private data, take over its copyright, and make it public. But in fact, it just says that if you use Google to host, say, a word-processing document or spreadsheet, and you want said document to be publicly available on the Web, you must agree to let Google, you know, make it public. Why Asay is resorting to scare tactics over this is beyond me. Is he pursuing an anti-Google agenda? Or is he just sloppy? I'm voting for just sloppy.