[TheAdamAndChe]

> Let's pretend.. that Google and all of its services were going to [shut down] in exactly 30 days

That wasn't the question the post above was asking. The question wasn't "given a chance to prepare, would the economy collapse," the question was "if Google were to suddenly collapse, would our economy survive?"

There exist several single points of failure in our global economy. Given the incredible importance Google has in our economy, with search, email, collaboration software, and cloud computing, it's not a stretch to say that Google is one of those points of failure.

It's also a location of power concentration. Google basically controls the internet as most see it. If your site is removed from Google, its chance of becoming popular is almost completely removed. If you are forced off of Google and you aren't prepared, you could lose years of important information. They also track nearly everyone, opening up the possibility of corporate population control and cultural shaping.

Do we really want single corporations this powerful?

[christophilus]

I have relatives who are in education, and I was fairly shocked to hear how Google has taken over that space. I don't think this is a good thing at all. Not sure what can be done about it, though. If they become as dominant here as they are elsewhere, they really could control the world's information from cradle to grave. takes tin foil hat off

[ryandrake]

The parent didn't specify a time frame, just that a failure of Google would result in "untold economic harm to the nation and world". Even if they went away tomorrow with no notice, sure there would be some pain and a lot of IT departments would be pulling in extra hours for some months, but come on...