incrediBILL - 2:38 am on Aug 8, 2012 (gmt 0)

get at the data about what the user searches for and what they look at, even when they are not using G search to do their searching..

Now that people expect browsers to suggest searches and check whether sites are safe or not they all 'phone home' in some manner. That doesn't bother me as long as the intention is to improve the user experience when doing searches, showing relevant ads, basically improving my online experience based on my online activities vs showing me junk I'm not interested in seeing.

The only problem that I see is Google didn't always disclose these activities nor let you opt-out which is why some transparency would've done them a lot of good instead of trying to keep everything hidden like it was a trade secret.