This is what really bothers me about it. If it weren't Google, it would be someone else. What we probably have to worry about is that the base level of privacy

This is what really bothers me about it. If it weren't Google, it would be someone else. What we probably have to worry about is that the base level of privacy that is easy to achieve is in freefall. The incentives for any individual organization are too strong, because of the level of service (to consumers or advertisers or whatever) can be so much stronger. It seems to me that compounding this is the fact that the 'digital age' makes monopolies natural in alot of places, even if only for a short time. We're already rapidly adjusting to a loss of privacy, and maybe it's a necessary progression and privacy advocates will one day be a quaint historical footnote. Even so, I'm definitely in the paranoid camp, and if we don't make a conscious effort to have a more active cultural attitude towards privacy, we might not be able to preserve any of it if we have a collective 'oh shit' moment down the road.