> The amount of bad faith people ascribe to basic usability functions utterly astounds me.

I think most of it comes from how Google (and the industry in general) has evolved. There was a day[0] when things were labeled clearly and the default behavior wasn't to vacuum up as much data about users in the name of basic usability functions.

The amount of trust people have in companies to keep their private information safe from prying eyes is what's truly astounding.

[0] http://images.devshed.com/sc/stories/Google_Desktop_Search2b...