Possible privacy concerns aside, Google is intelligent about software design, and from that perspective this announcement is exciting. Most of us like seeing new or revised ideas. Hopefully they come up with some great stuff.

Sometimes google is not as intelligent. I HATED web history in google chrome so much, i've uninstalled it. They haven't improved it yet...

I'm not sure paranoic is a word. Anyway, I am cautious with the information I transmit over the web (whitelist cookies, clear histories (ff bug once exposed them), and generally try to keep myself anon). It's not a black and white, Google take advantage of the fact that most people enable cookies, so that's enough to keep me below their radar (generally).

I don't think there are any white knights out there MS are also a bit shady, but currently on the back foot, so more cautious. However Google really do take the biscuit when it comes to creepy. They are really trying to get a complete social network of the world. They want to know everything everyone said to everyone else. The best example would be their wave experiment, where by "invite" you could tell google everyone you knew. Very clever, but a forerunner to their attempts to get into facebooks data.

For all your skepticism of my arguments, it does not change the fact that google make a profit. They are an advertising firm, not a charity. They do things to advance their market position. They release a "free" service, they expect to monetise it.

what do you mean Jimmy, I don't have a marketting strategy?

Of course they are. And making google search, google maps etc for free they make more on advertising they would ever made when youd have to pay them money

I'm still using Firefox on my desktop, and while people say that Firefox is slow on netbooks, I've found it to be almost as fast as Chrome on mine. Still, I use Chrome on my netbook, and I agree with your feelings regarding the history functionality. I don't like their bookmarks setup as much either, though I do like the most recently visited page functionality. So, yeah. They do somethings really nicely, but they certainly have some downsides as well.

Yes, that helps them. The big push in advertising on the net at the moment is "conversion rates". This magical sentence is meant to identify that of an average number of users that see your advert, how many click it. This is the big business, the selling point. This is obtained from having your advert tailored to a particular demographic. Believe me at least in that I worked for a company that made its money from adverts, that said in an answer to a question in an internal Q & A "if we can sell kids, we'll do kids". He wasn't referring to the slave trade, simply that that they sell adverts not by viewing figures, but by demographics. So for google (who already have a cookie on most peoples machine), the key thing is knowing who you are, and as much about you as possible. That's the thing that makes the money, giving you the ads you might click.

Perhaps this will get FaceBook to improve their service. For example: I'd love the option to edit my posts within a minute or so of posting. Sometimes, I make a spelling error, or phrase something awkwardly, and would love to change it, rather than simply post another message and delete the old one. Though, maybe it does exist and I just haven't caught on yet.

I've tried it, and it really doesn't make much difference on my gaming desktop, but if you're referring to my netbook, then yeah. Sounds like it might be worth a shot.

And I want them to give me information that I find of interest, including ads that I'd be willing to click. Beats the hell out of random spam, doesn't it ? We have a common goal, Google and I. We both want for me to find interesting things. As such - I help them help me.

This made me laugh. Reminds me of the time I used Mapquest (back then there was really only Mapquest) to get to a show in Philadaelphia and I followed it to the "T". Next thing I know I am driving over a body of water, which I know there is none before Philadelphia and only between states and blah blah blah had to pay a toll to get back into my state. :(

On topic, I love Google but I am not silly enough to put real information in anything, really. :-\

Well, if anyone still needs a reason to distrust Facebook:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/george-hotz-aka-geohot-now-working-at-facebook-and-other-reformed-hackers/2011/06/28/AGozvFpH_blog.html

Yeah, but did you see this one:

http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-teens-spied-on-chats?skyline=true&s=i

EDIT - better story at the source link, changed the URL.

The article I linked referenced that one. I haven't said I trust Google; just that they are probably already watching when I touch myself at night.

XKCD really managed to capture the full extent of my feelings on the matter :D
http://xkcd.com/918/