"But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And [...] we’re all subject, in the US, to the Patriot Act, and it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."
His whole point is to NOT use their services because they are bound by law to turn over that kind of data. Not to shame you.
"The homepages of popular sites placed cookies for 275 third-party hosts. In just visiting the homepage of popular sites, we found 32 websites placed 100 or more cookies, 7 websites placed 200 or more cookies, and 6 websites placed 300 or more cookies. We found that Google tracking infrastructure is on 92 of the top 100 most popular websites and on 923 of the top 1,000 websites. This means that Google's ability to track users on popular websites is unparalleled, and it approaches the level of surveillance that only an Internet Service Provider can achieve."
I'm not sure if this was the exception or norm - I was just curious because their website was soooo slooow.
I just went and found the video clip, though, and I think that reading is incorrect. Schmidt isn't saying "don't do those things because we can't hide you from the feds". He's very clearly making two distinct different claims about privacy; the second half is about people with 'legitimate' reasons to need extreme privacy, while the first half looks like exactly the moral judgement everyone portrays it as.
But he’s also disregarding the fact that things people have done, historically, things that have been persecuted, but may only be “wrong” according to shifting cultural temperaments (e.g., loving somebody outside your race).
It’s pretty tone-deaf, in that sense.
Specifically because Schmidt made a career as a lobbyist for privacy erosion, I think he's open to criticism on this basis, even if he is not guilty of coercion.
If it were some random person who was just developing a product I would agree with you to leave well enough alone, but I think the lobbying angle is enough to clear the bar of "theses actions should be publicly scrutinized".
Edit: for the record, I did switch off of gmail too :)
It is the United States government, their laws, and enforcement.