drhowarddrfine - 3:36 am on Mar 14, 2010 (gmt 0)

While on the surface those are interesting points (for another discussion), those are only your own assumptions.

They are not assumptions, they are facts. Do you turn cookies off when you surf the web? Do you ever buy anything online? Do you fear for your privacy that retail operations know what you buy and when? Do you ever use a credit card?

What are the differences between the personal data collection with those services and that Google keeps track of what pages you visit to offer you better search? Does Google sell your name and personal data to anyone like the credit card companies and retail merchants do? Has Google ever been caught giving anyone's information away? What information does Google have about you that you did not give them or you feel they obtained without your permission?

Though you call it OT, I call it entirely relevant that one has no concerns about their OS phoning home but calls wifi searching "creepy" even though this is a necessary operation. I guess no one bothered to notice this:

Firefox 3.5 and later support the Geolocation API; this allows the user to provide their location to web applications if they so desire. For privacy reasons, the user is asked to confirm permission to report location information.