Poll: How much do you trust Google?

Now, or later? Right now, I trust them fairly well in that they're not abusing their powers very much, aside from having issues with bugs in their support AI programs.

But, someday, I fully expect the founders to move out and other people to move in who really don't care about the corporate slogan and who have no way to make the company grow except to monetize more of the personal data they're sitting on in ways that people won't like.

That's when I expect the real evil to begin.

Been wary of Google for a long time and fortunately it seems to be catching on a bit. Sometimes searches are necessary if none of the other engines turn up anything, but I try to avoid them in all other contexts (including GTalk and Google Groups). Realistically most of my information can still be found and connected, if specifically targeted, but at least someone has to work for it.

Who honestly believes that Google would snoop around in the email accounts of competing businesses?

How removed from reality and driven by paranoia do you have to be to think that?

I assume, jacquesm, that you were simply putting together scenarios to vote on and weren't necessarily implying this yourself.

It's not that I don't care... I just don't see the scenario were Google would care about my dirt specifically or do anything with it like blackmail me (not that there's really much worth blackmailing me with there).

It would be very hard for them to exploit personally identifying info on a large scale without it being noticed and causing a shit storm. And I don't call targeted ads 'exploiting' my info. That's a service.

I have the same problem. I do "trust" Google with some of my activities (such as watching online videos on -> Youtube and sometimes using the web search -> Google) but I do not trust them in the meaning that I think they do no evil with my data.

I trust they are not abusing the data they record about me, but I do not trust in the good of harvesting and data mining said data.