It actually was far worse in the past than it is now, both because Google management does learn from their mistakes and because Google is much bigger now and so they employ more people from marginalized backgrounds.<p>I&#x27;d say that peak &quot;all your data are belong to us&quot; was back in 2010, before the launch of Google Buzz and various location&#x2F;wifi privacy flaps in Europe.<p>I would be more worried now about the same dynamic existing in every other startup that takes off.  When a startup is on a break-out trajectory, it has its pick of applicants from a wide number of elite institutions.  Most of them will never have experienced powerlessness or marginalization, because <i>that&#x27;s what it takes to get into a hot startup</i>.  And so they generally won&#x27;t be able to empathize with what it&#x27;s like to have arbitrary fact X in your background taken and used against you in devastating ways, even if they do genuinely sympathize.