Scoble is afraid of Google WIFI because Google could mine usage data to build a better search engine. His fear seems rooted in the prospect of MSN falling further behind Google in the search engine wars, but he mixes in a little "big brother is watching" too.

Well, if you own the last few yards in between people and the Internet you can really learn a lot. You can watch everything those people click on, what pages they visit, what browsers they use, how often they turn on Skype, and a lot of other stuff.

Does anyone else see the irony in this? We're supposed to fear a micro-ISP when Microsoft could be monitoring many more users through its mega-ISP MSN. How much attention data is MSN mining? Are we supposed to trust Microsoft more than Google? Is MSN watching "everything people click on, what pages they visit, what browsers they user, how often they turn on Skype..."?