It's not paranoia. I've met a few guys who used to work for Google, and they basically admitted Google got where it is today from the selling of personal information (which is perfectly legal, assuming the user is properly informed, which is debatable). That's pretty much fact. I don't care what they know about me, that wasn't the point, the point was the discrepancy of the individuals claim that Apple did A while Google doesn't do A. In fact, it would be more precise to admit that Google is making their stake in the system through selling out their users. As for opting out, where is the option to opt out of Google using your searches to sell your data to corporate America and its advertisers?
How has Apple used the sale of its customers to gain a profit? With a lot of money in the bank and selling more products than Google, I'd gather that Apple has made it with the sale of their hardware and software products and iTunes, especially with the hugely successful sales of their mobile devices such as the iPod and iPhone. Also, didn't Apple just celebrate the 10,000,000,000th iTunes download? With a roughly 30% tax on every iTunes purchase/download, that's a lot of profit.
I'm not going to bother a point-by-point response, too much work.
I did say "my paranoia" not anyone else's, and you know the old saying "just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you." LOL
With Apple's closed books, we don't know what data they have about us, and what they do with it. You can't argue that point, can you? I don't know.
As for the 30% iTunes tax, there's surely profit in there, but I imagine that bandwidth, server costs, payment accounting, and credit card surcharges suck up a good deal of that.
The reality is, that while Google collects data about my surfing habits, if I use their search engine, and my other interests (if I use their email), they don't know anything about what I do off the internet, so they hardly know everything about my life. On the other hand, my grocery store knows everything I eat, my bank knows everyone i do business with, my credit card knows everyone I buy things from, Blue Cross knows more about my health than I do, etc, etc. You have no privacy in the modern world, if you live the typical life the "westerner". It's a fact.
As for Google privacy opt out:
Well, you can always start with the Google opt-out privacy cookie:
http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html
Then there's the opt-out plug-in:
http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/plugin/
And of course the Google dashboard:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/11/google-dashboard.html
For the more techie types, you can edit your hosts file to block all things Google. (And man, what a much nicer place the net looks like with the ads turned off! Try the winhelp2002 hosts file.)
And don't forget the ULTIMATE GOOGLE PRIVACY OPT OUT - don't use Google search and services. Use Yahoo or Bing or whatever. I think it's silly to assume they're not doing the same things, though.
