ThatAdamGuy - 12:27 pm on Aug 22, 2005 (gmt 0)

You can turn that stuff off (er, it might be off by default... I don't recall... it's nearly 5:30am my time... eeek!)

There's a checkbox next to "Enable advanced options" and if you click on the advanced options link, you can learn more:

By using advanced features, you may be sending information about web sites you visit and non-personal usage information to Google. The web sites you visit are used to make some features of Google Desktop available to you. For example, in order to personalize the news shown in the Sidebar, Google Desktop sends information on the news pages you're visiting. This does NOT tell us who YOU are. Non-personal usage data, including crash reports, is used to help improve Google Desktop. [...]