I, like many others in this thread, think this is a fairly gross over-reaction. As engineers, we're trained to dig up problems and create solutions -- and a bi

I, like many others in this thread, think this is a fairly gross over-reaction. As engineers, we're trained to dig up problems and create solutions -- and a big part of this process is understanding what data can be made available to you and how you can use it to make your product better. I sincerely believe that they saw the immense potential of having this information available to them and ran with it under the excitement-induced delusion to the effect of, "who could be unhappy with this when it brings so much value to the table?" I think their flaw was either in not polling their user base before hand or making it opt in to begin with, but I also think that this oversight happened because they truly believed in the usefulness of what they were doing. Then again, I still believe that Google isn't trying to be evil (nor do I really think they ARE particularly evil for the time being), so take my opinion with a grain of salt.