Recently, at the Aspen Ideas Festival, WNYC talk show host asked Google CEO Eric Schmidt if Google's constantly growing importance to users in the United States and around the world meant that Google needed to be regulated as a utility by the Federal Government. The surprise wasn't in Schmidt's response (which was "no"), but the fact that everyone in the room laughed at Lehrer's suggestion.

But is it that funny? Google tracks your to deliver relevant advertising; the company inadvertently controls a large amount of what you see online through its search results; it's since Alexandria; it has a ; and offers a wide range of services that bring more and more of your daily online habits into its online sphere. Heck, Google has even .

But Google Wants to Do Even More.

Earlier this week, Google announced it's jumping off its own servers and onto your desktop with its own operating system, . The move has prompted , including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Digital Democracy, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the American Consumer Institute Center for Citizen Research.

Google has often been accused of poor privacy standards, and has been many times. The search giant's entry into a market largely dominated by Windows has received applause for bringing more competition to the OS market, but a successful operating system could put even more information about your computing behavior into the hands of one company.