Google is FUBAR
Disclaimer: I am a Google engineer. These opinions are my own. Nothing I say in any way represents the company's position, officially or unofficially.<p>That being said, I see all this as much ado about nothing.<p>Privacy policies are complex beasts governed by many regulatory environments. Reducing a huge number of these policies to a handful, announcing it ahead of time and giving you controls over privacy all seem like good things to me.<p>As far as SPYW goes, it's all about giving the users more relevant results. This is something you can opt out of (to some extent with privacy controls, otherwise with logging out).<p>To me this seems to be another of these "bubble" issues.<p>Take Apple as an example of that. Every time they release a new (iPhone, iPad, whatever) you'll see people in the tech bubble (largely of SF and NYC) dig up tired old cliches like "its evolutionary not revolutionary" (seriously, I'm <i>so</i> sick of hearing that phrase) and it's "not the upgrade I was hoping for". On HN you'll find people who are still somehow shocked that you can't out-of-the-box sideload a bootloader onto an iPhone (or whatever).<p>Consumers (outside the bubble) however <i>love</i> these new products. Just look at Apple's 2011Q4 results, which are simply <i>astounding</i>. Thing is, that happens <i>every</i> time and yet the same old jaded "bubblistas" meet every new release with the same mix of lukewarm cliches, disappointment and derision.<p>I see this as much the same way. All of this is about (IMHO) improving the user experience. You don't have to look very far to see accounts from users who love these new features.<p>If we know something of your interests (based on G+ and/or search), isn't suggesting more relevant content to you on Youtube (as a purely hypothetical example) a good thing?<p>EDIT: as far as including Twitter/FB goes, Eric Schmidt addressed this [1]:<p>> I countered that Google seemed to have all the permission it needed, in that they’re not blocked from crawling pages.<p>> “That’s your opinion,” Schmidt said, then joked: “If you could arrange a letter from Facebook and Twitter to us, that would be helpful.”<p>> I pushed back that both have effectively given those letters since their robots.txt files — a method of blocking search engines — weren’t telling Google to go away.<p>> “That’s your interpretation of their policies,” Schmidt said.<p>[1]: <a href="http://marketingland.com/schmidt-google-not-favored-happy-to-talk-twitter-facebook-integration-3151" rel="nofollow">http://marketingland.com/schmidt-google-not-favored-happy-to...</a>