walkman - 4:55 pm on Apr 21, 2005 (gmt 0)

apples and oranges.
1. The logs that Verizon, Time Warner etc. etc. have are raw logs. As far as we know, they don't have it detailed in databases where I went last night, what did I search for etc. etc.

2. and most importantly: those logs are destroyed after 30 days or so not kept there for perpetuity.

You might not know my address or credit card number, but you know my email and it isn't hard (in most cases) to find out who is behind it. Chances are you've posted with that e-mail here and there, and many people have firstname_lastname etc. The identity theft can be fixed, it's painful and time consuming, but it doesn't "cost" you anything. Having an embarrasing detail released by a disgruntled Google employee or a hacker can be much, much worst.

It's true that all the info you have, we give it to you by using Google. And it's also true that most people don't think too much about it, but Google is losing their innocence and the press will soon catch up with it. You can't have it both ways. MSFT wouldn't dare of doing that. Remember the heat they got for their Media Player info and Windows calling home to make sure it's licensed? Peeople don't like being spied into.

"On the other hand, walkman, Google doesn't know a user's identity in general, and we only see info that you send to Google. ISPs have much more information (including contact info and credit card numbers) than any search engine does. Having worked at Google for several years, I'm proud of the amount of respect we have for our users' privacy. I do think it's important that we don't allow third-party cookies, for example."