I am not always awake, even when I appear to be clothed, eating, and mumbling.

So I am grateful to Google for waking me up the other morning with the news that it knew where I was. Of course, you always knew they always knew. But suddenly, as I was performing a Google search for a David Arquette Halloween mask, there was my location on the left side of the search page.

It felt like my neighbor had come in by the back door, sat down at my kitchen table, and helped herself to Weetabix and cookies. Well, not quite. You see, Google had somehow got my location wrong. The company seems to believe I live five miles north of where I actually do.

Still, I found myself wondering what this all might mean. So I did a Google search and discovered that this was all part of a robust thrust into location-based customization. When Google knows where you are, it can offer you more local, intimate, cuddly results for any search you might choose to perform. Such as, I don't know, "who is the president of Azerbaijan"

We know where you are. And you know we know where you are. So what&39's the big deal

No one should be surprised that Google knows where they are. This idea has been around for a long time. Every time you land in another time zone, your cell phone knows exactly where you are, so why might this be a problem

Perhaps it isn't. Perhaps this is merely another small step toward mankind's new public life.

However, I was somehow moved to read a little of Google's explanation behind telling me that I live five miles north of where I do. So I went to Google's location-based help pages to learn more.

What moved me most is Google's pride in informing me that I cannot turn off location-based services. This isn't personal. You can't turn them off either.

Here is Google's explanation: "The customization of search results based on location is an important component of a consistent, high-quality search experience. Therefore, we haven't provided a way to turn off location customization, although we've made it easy for you to set your own location or to customize using a general location as broad as the country that matches your local domain."

I know there will be many whose chests (and other parts) will fill with pride at the idea that searches can be customized within inches (or, in my case five miles) of your garage remote. But might there be one or two people who marvel, yet again, how companies that purport to be progressive and, dare one use the word, liberal, seem to think nothing of behaving in a manner that restricts and imposes

Google's help pages explains that if you live in Spain, you cannot perform a search through the eyes of an American or a Russian. You can, however widen your search so that it uses the country you are in (rather than the street) as its basis.

Google's charmingly constricting attitude toward location-based services is, quite naturally, all about business. If they know where you are, they can tell advertisers where you are and everyone can roll in a little more money.

It may well be that, in the extremely near future, our cell phones will be inundated with random spontaneous texts and e-mails offering us 20 percent off bras and negligees if we'd just turn 45 degrees to our left and step inside Victoria's Secret.

But isn't there something extremely sad about a company telling you that you might want to just be anonymous, you might want not to reveal your location, even if it's just for today, but you can't What you might want, you see, doesn't really matter. What you might spend does.

In a world in which choice is championed as one of the fundamentals of the free world, isn't it a little disconcerting to be told you have no choice