Privacy concerns have dogged the world’s most popular search engine for years, and Google’s responses have been less than the shining example of “Don’t be evil” we expect from them. They only recently halved the retention period for personal information to nine months, but even then their anonymizing process is simply changing the last digit in the logged IP. Diabolical! Even Microsoft completely eliminates IPs from search tracking data eventually. Best watch those cookies, too. Methinks some internet privacy education is needed for the laity.

International pressure (The EU in particular) and increased visibility in the tech world due to expanded services are tightening the screws on Google. People don’t mind if an IP gets logged for a while when they’re searching for what have you, but will that trust extend to text messages sent in Android, or info put into fields in Chrome? I don’t think Google is evil, but you have to do more than not be evil in order to keep a user’s trust.