(Column) - It seems my harping about the security concerns with Google Earth has finally found favor with the Indian President publicly calling it a security issue. In response, Google gave a non-committal ‘we are open to discussion’ reply, which doesn’t really do much to alleviate any fears.

The fact is that with Google Earth, you can pretty much see whatever area you want and map out a plan to go there. Unless something has changed dramatically in two years, you would most likely find the images to be accurate, and the terrorists around the world would find it pretty convenient to map out their terrorizing plans.

A website recently ran a contest where an incredible number of users published pictures of army/military bases that you would not get to see otherwise. The coordinates, images, locations and pretty much everything except the actual addresses were published for all to glance over and absorb.

Now this may not be a security threat per se for the images that are two years old. How do we know they are two years old? Well, Google told us so. And why exactly should we trust Google? We shouldn’t and I don’t.

Interestingly, Google Earth has gotten into a fairly complex political problem between China and Taiwan. They showed Taiwan as a province of China. When the Taiwanese got back to Google saying it was all-wrong, Google apparently fixed it and everything went back to normal, or so we thought? The problem: China is hopping mad, as they still prefer to believe that Taiwan is their province. It’s being prompted and murmured that Chinese should boycott Google’s Chinese service.

Remember the Kai Fu Lee saga? Google and Microsoft are battling over the Chinese market, and it doesn’t bode too well for Google that the people on the other side of The Great Wall are not particularly delighted with it.

With Google Earth catching up as a concept, these few conflicts and accusations are just the beginning, and as the concept really catches on, these will only increase and put more pressure on the search giant. It’s possible that some people were caught in the camera shots that have been posted, then these small things could escalate into full blown trials and legal hassles for Google.

Google being Google has been calm, quiet and un-forthcoming on this issue, however, it might not find the future so easy.