refracta wrote:Awww, come on...It is much more convenient for all that info to be in one place. That way the government only needs to deal with one company to manage my privacy and safety. It is so reassuring just thinking about it.
Intrusive government is only one concern. Google isn't a charity, it collects the data in order to profit from it. Some of the publicly available software is free and/or for-free software because it makes sense to offer free to use apps and services while the real value is elsewhere. As non-paying consumers we don't have that much idea of what they can/might do with it, who else might benefit from it and so on, only some impossible to verify assurances and the mantra "Do No Evil". If all the data my ISP holds on me was leaked/sold to a marketing company or a criminal it would be a problem but not a disaster. They only have a partial picture of me online. They also supply my wired telephone but not my mobile phone. They don't supply my email service or my DNS, or any VOIP. But if I used a single company's DNS, mail, browser, search, office apps, storage, web gallery, payment systems, VOIP and mobile phone services then a
single breach or inappropriate use of the data could reveal my whereabouts at any given time, movements, everyone I ever called, emailed, chatted to, every online shopping session (possibly even payment method and history), political affiliation, memberships of online communities, offline societies etc etc.
Also I tried the Google browser and it doesn't compare well with Iceweasel or even Midori. As far as I can tell it exists only in order to become the key part of the Google OS, and on other platforms to promote Google apps. As I don't intend to use Google's OS and I don't need their apps beyond a pop3 mail service then I'm much better off using a more capable browser.