Caveat: if something’s “free,” you’re the product. Google wants to pull as much metadata from you as possible. I don’t trust anyone who gives me something for free. I therefore limit how I use it.
>private data
Ah, the fabled "metadata is not data" defense. Sadly, given the scale and pervasiveness of Google, observing meta-data and cross-referencing your activity with others' activities is good enough to deduce most of the valuable information about you with reasonably good reliability. And this data, both by itself, and also aggregated with other users', is "good enough" for any privacy-busting use.
tl;dr: you are the meta-product.
Always great to see this opinion on free news sites.
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