The Wall Street Journal has a long and interesting piece about Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and "the search for the future." At least in the beginning, the article details how Google has hit some stumbling blocks for the first time in recent memoryall the while, however, Schmidt seems content and genuinely excited about the future.

After all these years, search is still at the core of what the company doesand it that will continue to be the case, but in new ways, Schmidt said. "We're trying to figure out what the future of search is," Schmidt told the paper. "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

That's sort of where things start to go off the rails a bit. There's little doubt that the hyper-targeting capabilities of location-based services is the future of making profits in the mobile worlda space in which Google has a lot invested, with its Android operating system and its numerous mobile sites. But such topics naturally lead to conversations about privacyparticularly with a service as ubiquitous as Google search.

Schmidt said users will abandon services as soon as they find them "creepy," but it's surely difficult for most of us to imagine a modern life suddenly devoid of Google servicesand let's be honest, how many people would really notice a gradual decline on that front?

And while Google was founded on the principle of the free exchange of information, too much openness seems to scare even him. "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable, and recorded by everyone all the time," Schmidt told the Journal. The paper goes on to add, "He predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media sites."

What are the "youthful hijinks" to which he is referring? "I'm not even talking about the really terrible stuff, terrorism and access to evil things," he clarifies. And, heck, in a world where people get fired every day over Facebook status updates, it's hard to argue the point. Often times, once something is up there, it's up there.

I never really liked my last name that much anyway.