The annual Google Summer of Code is upon us again. For the uninformed, that’s when Google pays hundreds of students and hundreds of mentors to work on free software projects, ranging from AbiSource to Zumastor. This is where great projects like the GDebiKDE installer were created. And this year looks even better than before, with 175 organizations and 1125 students. So today, I’m going to do a short rundown of some of my favorites. I can’t fit them all in (let’s save some trees!), but these are just some that stood out for me.

The Google App Engine doesn’t really advance the cause of evil all that much, but it’s not exactly good, either. Google makes a big deal about its corporate motto, “Don’t be evil”, but at the end of the day, Google really is just another corporation, no matter how well-intentioned its founders may have been. Regardless of whether the corporation holding the carrot is called “Microsoft” or “Google”, developers should think long and hard before following the primrose path towards lock-in to non-standard designs.

I’ll admit it. I fell hook, line and sinker for Google’s “We do No Evil” claim. I loved Google.com. I host my email accounts on Google using the hosted domains service. I use blogger.com for my tech blog. Google was my home page.

So what changed? I started to sense something wrong a few months ago when I started watching the ads in GMail. They’re reading my mail. That’s not a revelation of course. Everyone knows that. But the reality of it hit me like a ton of bricks. Some bot in the kingdom of Google is reading my mail and targeting ads directly at me.

There are companies we love and respect. Google is one of them. Regardless of their mistakes, their jet, their priorities in terms of software releases, there is an “innate” trust.

But, is it safe to trust Google?

I am asking this because I got burned. Not by Google, but by Virgin Mobile Australia.

That’s right, they’re the top dogs in the business; with “unprecedented control” in the technology industry and “access to a huge amount of consumer information”. And a concerned member of the technology community recently put out the call for scrutiny on the new big boys in town “from regulatory authorities to ensure a competitive… market”. Sounds like old news, huh? You know which big dirty corporate bad guys I’m referring to? The baddest of the lot… Google of course.

Several blogs and newspapers recently reported that Practice Fusion is partnering with Google, which will provide targeted ads for Practice Fusion’s EHR solution. However, while everyone is wondering when and how Google will be getting into Health IT, Google is not (yet) entering the EHR market. Most importantly, Practice Fusion’s business model is trivial to implement using free software. Read on for the all the gory technical details.

The Google Partnership