Google is FUBAR

People like to bitch and gossip about whoever's on top. It's why celebrity tabloids exist, it's perversely why shows like Jersey Shore and My Super Sweet 16 exist, it's why people complain about Apple or Google or Microsoft back in the day.

Couple the innate tendency towards bitching with the prospect of ad revenue from eyeballs, and you get the kind of tabloidy trash we've seen from pandodaily et al. It's just people capitalizing on some of the seedier aspects of human nature.

Google will survive this "controversy" (which 99.99% of its users haven't heard of), just as it will endure the cyclic cries of "you're being evil!". Sarah Lacy will continue to write sordid tales of no-goodery, and the Internet will continue to lap it up. Bloggers will continue to seize on the latest controversy to get pageviews, and so on.

> I do have to ask, though - if you have an issue with Google's having access to your data, why do you use Google services?

Because no one does have a real issue with it. They might be bugged by the abstract thought of it, but they certainly aren't bothered enough to do anything. Empty words, floating on the wind...

So for users Google+ is most relevant in social? Not even one link from Facebook or Twitter? Just like Google Local is best for the users when showing 100% Google links. Please do not insult people's intelligence. Google is doing this for a few reasons and plastering more ads is the main one. With Google+ a lote users get to stay on Google+ due to placement not go to our sites.

Just because some criticize Apple and some are now criticizing Google doesn't mean that Google is doing the right thing, considering Apple's success. Apple works perfectly for 99+% of users and APPL never touches that, Google is adding crap and hiding what the users want with dozens of ads (Please don't go into "they're relevant." Yeah, so relevant to your CFO that Google feels the need to show me a full page of them and I need to turn my laptop screen to see what are ads and what is content.) Now imagine if Apple added 2-3 extra tasks to their most basic functions.

Tracking is another beast. Do not poke the government or users in the eye or they will make you cry. A tiny change in the law and there goes half of your revenue. Once they determine you're "evil," everything you do is under scrutiny and that includes ads, tracking, anti-trust and everything. And next time you advertise illegal abortion drugs through Adwords they will just jail your execs and cripple the company.

Yes (it's certainly convenient), but:

a) People will naturally question your motivations for these changes

and b) they will wonder at the privacy implications

The problem is (especially from the perspective of the tech press) you appear to be primarily motivated by "beating" Facebook, and people are now looking uncomfortably at their personal data juxtapositioned with public search results.

It may be that you held all this data already, and it may be that it's just as siloed off and protected at the back-end as it ever was, but the public is slow to wake up to the implications of the data you already hold. What might have flown below their radar yesterday, they're increasingly worried about today. Naturally the tech community who are better informed and think about these things much earlier are going to be amongst the first to start questioning you.

You're really shoving it in everyone's faces, so don't be surprised that there's some backlash.

This is not a walled garden thing, it is about putting users in glass houses controled by google.

We need to get out of this trap, and fast. Make these services crowed sourced and open source.