LifeinAsia - 8:09 pm on Jan 25, 2006 (gmt 0)

Even if I've never used the internet there's likely a lot of personal information about me that they have and which is growing by the day.

Oddsod, I think you are taking paranoia to a new level.
There is no way that Google (or anyone else) could take the various bits of anonymous info and put it together to build a profile about you on the level you're indicating.

Yes, cookies can be used to track user behavior on a computer. Can they positively identify a user of computer A as John Doe? No. For a very few cases, someone could conceivably connect several dots to see that computer A always uses IP x.y.z.w, which is a static IP address assigned to a DSL account owned by ACME DSL company. Does ACME DSL put its subscriber list in the public domain? Very doubtful. True, the police could subpoena ACME's records and find that John Doe is the subscriber in question. But John Doe has a wife, and a brother visiting from Bristol, and three kids, all of whom invite their friends over to surf on Joe's DSL. And who's to say that he is even related to the same John Doe that bought a certain book at Amazon 4 years ago?

The art of providing useful search results of web sites is a difficult enough art form. To mine all the data that the Big G has and try to link it to individual persons is too mind boggling to consider! The Big G has MUCH better things to expend their efforts doing.