The laptop Dogs of War

Is there something in the champagne bubbles that drive the rich and famous crazy after attaining the heady heights of `Rich-Hood`? Google is “very, very proud” of cyberactivist Wael Ghonim, a young executive at the company who emerged as a leading voice of the Egyptian uprising, company boss Eric Schmidt said on Tuesday.” (The Telegraph, Feb 15, 2011.) The official dead count from the Egypt uprising stands at 365. Were those who lost their lives to the revolution only the human means to an end?

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Google hero Ghonim is the company head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa, who one day administered a FaceBook page that helped spark the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak’s regime. The deserved glory days of Google’s status as No. 1 search engine, seem to have skyrocketed the Internet giant into an era of cyber revolution leadership. Is it conspiracy theory thinking to ponder how Google crossed over the Rubicon with a January 20, 2011 announcement that effective April 4, Schmidt would be resigning as CEO of Google, but continue on as the executive chairman of the company, just five days before the Egypt uprising? Or that two days after his “very, very proud” of cyberactivist Wael Ghonim moment, he is set to meet today with President Barack Obama? Obama will travel to San Francisco today to meet with top technology execs, including Schmidt, Apple’s Steve Jobs and FaceBook’s Mark Zuckerberg. It’s an an “undisclosed” private residence where the Big O will hook up with technology’s bigwigs. Although Wael Ghonim is getting all the credit for toppling the Mubarak regime, he is one of two Google executives leading the charge for cyberspace revolution. Director of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen heads up the Alliance for Youth Movement (AYM), which trains digital activists like the ones who toppled Mubarak. While piling accolades on Ghonim, Schmidt seems to be leaving it to Jared Cohen, who claims he was third only to Obama and John McCain in the Tweet department when he was a Member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning staff (2006-2009), to sing his own praises. Must be oh so boring to be the world’s Number 1 Search Engine when you could be bringing down governments in service to the revolution. The champagne has turned into Kool-Aid over at Google. Meanwhile, here’s hoping that Glenn Beck continues to remind Google it is time to practice their own slogan: “Do No Evil”.