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From your first link:

"Google’s press office did not respond Friday to an email inquiry about the case, but a lawyer standing by for Petrick said he believes the evidence was all culled from the hard drives and he has no information that Google participated in the investigation."

So this shows Google's "evilness" about as much as it shows the evilness of the browser and OS the guy was using.

Speaking of which, as the company that writes the OS and Mail.app, doesn't Apple have just as much access to personal communications for its users as Google does? How do you know that the OS and mail programs don't have back doors that can be used whenever it's required? You can't even get root on your own iPhone (unless you jailbreak it), so in a very real way they have more control over you own device than you do. How can you be sure that it's not beaming your GPS coordinates to [insert evil institution here] all the time? You know when you're sending information to Google, but Apple controls closed-source software running on a location-aware personal device with a microphone on it that people carry around all the time.

So this shows Google's "evilness" about as much as it shows the evilness of the browser and OS the guy was using.

Enabling private browsing eliminates local browser history. There is no such recourse for server-side tracking. Even turning off cookies (and Flash [1]) won't stop that [2].

Apple controls closed-source software running on a location-aware personal device with a microphone on it that people carry around all the time.

There is merit to your accusation in that there is no way to monitor network traffic over 3G to verify that audio is not transmitted. However, all cell phones allow basic geo-location via triangulation (most carriers lie about that), so if you don't want to be found you shouldn't have a cell phone at all.

[1 | http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cook...]

[2 | http://panopticlick.eff.org]

"However, all cell phones allow basic geo-location via triangulation (most carriers lie about that), so if you don't want to be found you shouldn't have a cell phone at all."

It is technically possible for all web pages to track your activity there, so if you don't want to be tracked you shouldn't be using the web at all.

Would not packet sniffers have told us by now that Apple was transmitting more data than users expect, if that were the case?

Maybe, maybe not. What if Mail.app is programmed only to turn on this back door in certain circumstances? Only a very small percentage of people would ever think to packet sniff all the data their computer is sending. If this privacy-invading mode could be turned on by, say, sending a very specific spam-looking message to Mail.app, you could use this capability only when needed and be almost guaranteed that the target user is not running a packet sniffer.

Also, how are you going to packet sniff what your iPhone is sending over 3G?

Capacity for harm != actual harm done.

To play Devil's advocate: The United States controls over five thousand thermonuclear missiles. Sudan controls none. So what country has been more evil in the last decade?

It's important to acknowledge, too, that Google likely has more blackmail-able information on us than the FBI.

Your analogy is confusing. Thermonuclear weapons have nothing to do with morality.

It's about capacity for harm.

So what country has been more evil in the last decade?

That probably depends on who you're asking.

Probably the united states. They've killed millions of people around the world in the last decade. If you don't limit it to the last decade, it's even worse.

Yeah. It's not the crispest distinction to make. But, note that the U.S. has also helped a whole lot of people.

a - b = c

Being utilitarian about it, which country has done better in the last decade?

Being utilitarian about it, India or China is ahead no matter what, because of all of those little sacks of utility known as "babies" they've produced. ;)

I agree that Google's scope of possible evil is much more significant. But this is really all about perception, not reality. What Steve Jobs says at an internal Apple employee meeting isn't going to truly change Apple, but it may change how the employees view their company.

The way I see it, he's blowing off some steam around friends. The man is peerless (and has yet to name a successor), and has his '60s ideals at heart. He is right to call a slogan like "Don't be evil" bullshit when it comes from an ambitious public company that makes all of their money selling ads (targeted by mining collected private data) on a "free" service. "Organizing the world's data," is appropriate, but no company can say honestly say "Don't be evil." At least with Apple you know what you're getting, and you know what it costs.

There's good reason he has yet to publicly name a successor--when you publicly name a successor, the successor gets all anxious to take over and people start expecting you to step aside in the near future. If you don't believe me, ask Jay Leno or Brett Favre.

You don't think Apple has access to that kind of info on people? Have you heard of MobileMe? There's plenty of opportunity for Apple to do the same works.

They may not have data on as many people, but it's just the nature of their business. I think that Google has a pretty decent track record with that kind of thing.

In both of the examples you posted, the evidence was [probably, in the last case; the article is ambiguous] retrieved from the accused's computer's history and/or cache, not Google itself.

> Have you heard of MobileMe?

MobileMe is paid up front, and not ad supported. There is no collection of private data for the purposes of targeting ads, and your actions are not correlated to your search history, or any website that uses AdSense or DoubleClick. Your email may be on their servers, but it is not connected to a tangled net of tracking information that follows you everywhere that you go. Maybe Apple could add these things, but their business model has been for the customer to pay for their service up front, not for them to find creative ways to monetize any personal information they might have.

They did recently purchase Quattro Wireless for mobile advertising, but they say this is to provide a framework for iPhone developers to include ads in their apps. It's probably a competitive play to get developers to not use Google ads.

MobileMe still gives them a pretty extensive network of information about you ... all of your emails, contacts, etc. Google might track more, but you have no evidence to support a postulation that we should fear for its evilness. I agree that we should try to break the monopolies where Google has them, but they've been friendly heretofore.

And MobileMe isn't Apple's only source, it's just the most directly analogous to Google's data, but as pointed out above, all of Apple's offerings are closed-source and at least on the iPhone you have no idea how often Apple is pinging your phone or what data they're sending back. They have plenty of opportunity to gather even _more_ data than Google.

I don't think the "paid up front" thing matters very much, either. I would be surprised if Apple wasn't after the same kind of profiling that Google performs insofar as it has adequate data on a group of users. The same information that advertisers want (that Google automatically applies to their ads) so that they know what to sell you, Apple wants so that it knows what to sell you.

Sort of how you "pay up front" for newspapers and cable TV, and therefore don't see any ads? Oh wait.

No, it must be how you "pay up front" for printers, and therefore the manufacturer isn't trying to make money off you on the ink. Oh wait.

"Paying up front" is no guarantee that the company isn't still trying to make money off you after the fact.

Do you know that your MobileMe isn't connected to your iTunes search history, the songs you've bought, the sites you visit on your iPhone, the apps you search for and buy on the app store, etc?

No need to prove that Apple is evil or not, that's Google claim not Apple one. Apple claim to be original and sophisticated not that they are the next mother Theresa, they fully embrace the fact that they are a business and don't pretend otherwise.