I'll stick with the search engine that has a legion of brilliant programmers working hard to bring me great search results.
There are already solutions for the people who want them (stop sending referer, adblock, etc).
FWIW, I do not want Google to change their behavior in this area.
I think we'll all agree that "people" in general (NB: not us) don't even understand the problem, so it's a little premature to claim a problem based on not wanting it solved. At this point I see it largely as an education campaign.
Maybe some other HN members would like to chime in here, but was anyone working during the late 90s/early 2000s and remember the "cookie scare" that went around? Some departments made it their policy to turn off cookies in the browser by default, other users refused to even go through a shopping cart (requesting instead to phone in orders) because they heard cookies steal their information.
That scare is probably why Google is being very proactive here because if users glean the incorrect information, it can be very difficult to convince them otherwise.
See the outrage over other privacy issues in the past regarding Google, Facebook, and countless other services. Specifically, see the outrage over the Google Buzz fiasco as an example.
Privacy issues are a concern. People aren't interested in the specifics, but they make the assumption that their information is kept private.
> There are already solutions for the people who want them (stop sending referer, adblock, etc).
There were solutions for Google Buzz at the time. Just because they exist doesn't mean they are implemented in a way that people can use them easily. The problem isn't the tools, it's the ability to use those tools by default.
Let me make this clear: people assume their information is secure by default. So, the reason you don't see a bigger uproar over this is because of assumptions people make.
DDG's "not tracking you" for example means Gabriel can never offer you personalized search based on your search history (he wouldn't be able to anyway as it's not in the APIs and it is impossible to be implemented properly on top of existing APIs). This is a tangible hit on the quality of your search results right there.
And then when people call you out on your FUD, I suggest you don't deny it.
as an aside, i don't think i've ever seen someone wearing a ski-mask while skiing, or for that matter, for any legitimate purpose. at what point will we stop calling them "ski masks"?
Dude, not cool. This is Hacker News. Please refrain from ad hominem attacks and stick to making intelligent, comments that contribute to the conversation, please.
It's very easy to wrongly assume that a big company that makes profit will treat everyone poorly, but that hasn't been my experience at all.
No matter how good the Google employes, the incentives are perverse and will twist Google's decision in favor of eroding customer privacy even more. See Schmidt's "privacy is dead" quote. Privacy is not dead yet, but the likes of Facebook and Google are trying really hard to kill it because there's more money for them if they do.
People are posting intimate details of their lives on the net. Sending naked pics around their phones. They killed privacy off themselves because it gives them freedom in other ways.
Even for those people, it's important that they have some control over what they post. For instance they expect their phone pic to be private to them and the person they sent it to, or they expect their Facebook info to be available only to friends and they expect that they can be able to delete it or change it.
Even if your premise were correct, we have to ask ourselves if it is desirable for society that privacy is dead and I can't see how the answer would ever be yes.