Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I moved into IT almost 10-15 years ago, Google was one of the companies that I adored (in a kind of naive way, but nevertheless..). Working at that company has always been a dream of mine. They had the reputation for hiring the best of the best engineers, with great benefits and work culture. Meanwhile I'd hate to apply for them. Everything they do in terms of tracking, etc. has become so vile and almost evil th…
Well, I'm an ex employee. Actually nothing has changed inside the company. "Tracking" as you put it isn't perceived as evil, it never has been, and for good reasons. The only thing that's changed is people's perception of the company and - very recent post 2016 political issues aside - that was mostly driven by a sustained campaign by an angry media industry that wanted money (see: link taxes). Firstly, if tracking u…
ad 3), you make it sound as if it was one xor the other. This is sometimes the case to some degree (like checking urls for phishing sites), but far from always.
ad 4), it is not my problem as a user that you have trouble doing tests. If you need information for your business, then spend the money and effort to acquire it. Do not abuse your users without care. Your business case is not more important than people's privacy. And if others do this to gain an advantage over your business, don't whine, sue them.
When I was involved in user tests we had a lot of trouble due to our ethical concerns, but we did not consider dropping these concerns.
edit: I may add that I'm German. We were taught about the value of privacy in our history. "boring statistics about religion" led to the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews. Disregard for privacy led to the atrocious human rights violations in Eastern Germany. I cannot understand why Americans, who explained this to us Germans after WW2, apparently forgot all about the _reason_ for privacy.