Yeah but is it really a threat to privacy? Knee-jerk reaction to "you're being tracked" is that it's bad. The mark of the beast. Big brother. Etc. But who cares if they tailor ads and services based on your interests? Sounds like a convienance to me.

A bigger threat to privacy would be them keeping a database of all the ccard#'s, passwords, private identifiers (ssn, mother's maiden name, etc), etc. As far as, say, finding yourself in court and your browsing habits becoming evidence...well, they can and do already do that. While it's possible to wipe your HDD's free of that data, most people don't routinely do it throughouly enough to keep them from being able to access it. As far as criminal exploitation; I don't see any real big threat from them being able to access my browsing habits. Are there situations where it could be used for criminal activity? Probably, criminals are ingenious. Are they any worse that what criminals already do? No, not really.

Besides, with all the hidden trackers and adware and the like out there today, most people whether they like it or not are already being "profiled". So the "bad guys" already have this data. I don't see the harm in Google having it as well.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."