(also read https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/ )
https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/
> For legal reasons
> We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Google if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to:
> * meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.
> * enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations.
> * detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues.
> * protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, our users or the public as required or permitted by law.
On a more serious note, "everyone does that" makes it okay? Really?
DanBC didn't write anything which could imply he believes that "If you want privacy, you must be a child molester or a terrist".
His comment is stating what google does and gives a pretty strong example, not justifying what they do.
What I meant is that almost all companies will invade privacy to prevent and detect certain crimes. MS does it, but so do Google, Apple, etc etc.
Want to expand on that a little? Presumably the above quote is regarding skydrive etc.
For example: https://edri.org/microsofts-new-small-print-how-your-persona...
(when googling the phrase cited by kuschku, the first link is to reddit and there it links to edri).
That alone can be turned into "we can share whatever we want with anyone whenever we feel like it" very easily, you realize that?
The proper solution would be
> We will share personal information with governments if we are required by law to do so.
Nothing more, nothing less.