The majority of Google's income is derived from Advertising. That means they seek to collect as much demographic info as they can to better sell their ads.
But it doesn't
have to be that way, nor should it be. Advertising is obviously how any internet service makes reasonable profit, but targeting and recording personal data, such as age, and likes/dislikes, is really unacceptable.
MAINTAINING PRIVACY is paramount - because if they fail to do that - they will lose all of their users. They have every bit (and more) reason to protect users from being exposed because without them - they can't target ads.
Oh really?
http://gawker.com/5637234/ The fact of the matter is that Google does try to at least protect the data in some way, but as it turns out, it will always come out in some way, or another. That is in and of itself one of the large issues inside storing personal data. Especially as in this instance, there is no true need whatsoever to store this data at all.
I don't fully trust any company. Company's act in their best interest. That goes for Google, Apple, Samsung, McDonalds, Whole Foods, and extends to government agencies and other institutions.
Too true... But the storing and profiling of data for extended periods of time is an oddity as companies like Apple, when they do collect data, it's most often anonymous, and when it's not, the personal data is anonymized at a later to date, and all data is kept separate. While Google isn't alone in recording info, they are alone in the way they handle and store it, which is questionable...
But we're so off topic now because google forking webkit isn't going to mean any more or any less data collection than they already have access to.
Haha, yeah, a little, but I guess it sort of comes full circle.