I had the same mindset as yours perhaps a year or two ago, until I realized a couple of things that completely changed my mind. This is a little off the main to

I had the same mindset as yours perhaps a year or two ago, until I realized a couple of things that completely changed my mind. This is a little off the main topic but you see, when it comes to privacy, we like to think that we have it in our control but in fact we don't. As Snowden has proven, what the NSA is doing is far worse than Google. You just don't know it because it's completely hidden and sealed off from the public. But why do they have to conduct such extreme level of data mining you ask? Well, we are not living in manufacturing age anymore, that was maybe 40-50 years ago, we are living in an information age now. Everybody agrees that information is the new oil or the new currency. For the United States to continue being the leader of the world, it would be absolutely foolish for anyone to think that they don't have a complete and total full control of this key component. The public needs to start changing their mindsets and begins to accept that all information in your private life is being recorded. The only important aspect that needs to be questioned is to what extend the data is going to be used. Are some companies not going to hire you simply because of something you did in your private life three years ago that they may not agree with? That would be unacceptable to me as it would definitely cross the line. It is what I consider similar to the "social credit" system being implemented in China, in which everyone is under surveillance at all times and given scores for activities such as grocery shopping. There are always two sides of the extremes, and the balance we should strive for is somewhere in the middle. It's impossible to ask U.S companies like Google not to conduct data mining on their users. How do you expect them to compete with companies in other countries that monitor their users 24/7 and have access to larger and more accurate data? In the age of information and artificial intelligent, those companies will win the battles simply because they will have better insights that Google won't ever have. Companies in the West cannot readily admit what they're doing because the public mindset is not yet ready for this change. It's too drastic and against many values we have been familiar with our entire life. But our world is changing very quickly, it is not the same world as before, it's understandably very difficult for most people to wrap their head around this but we need to update our mindsets even if that means changing our values. Companies like Google cannot disclose what they do because of public backlash they will receive. If people are just going to switch to another company, all their investments will have been lost, and the next company will be forced to do the same anyway. Google's recent move was probably the best way to test out public water, and it is already not looking very good. I don't know if governments from the West will ever be able to crack this issue.