That's really problematic, that Google would even think that it knows better for its users whether they know it or not.
Users know best what is best for them, period. No need to second guess.
Remarketing works. It's not what people say, it's what they do.
And why shouldn't it be that way. I go to a local Peet's. They know my order now. Is that bad? Should I tell the barista to wipe my order history out of her memory?
I'm not saying there isn't a issue of privacy but the line is not where most think it is IMO. People are very willing to give out personal information in exchange for a chance to win a car in the local mall.
Taken in another direction: product. Users often don't express their real needs or can't identify them. One of the more interesting cases was the introduction of the mini-van. It tested miserably when they asked users. But Ford (I think it was Ford) decided to go ahead anyway and ... users wound up LOVING it.
This is very new territory still. I don't think we can predict what is going to happen if there is some massive repository of personal data that lives forever. So I'd rather we going at it with baby steps.
I'm not saying you're doing this now (not at all), but I do see people trying to have it both ways when talking about this issue.
The thing is, I'm old so I worked offline before the Internet. The personal information that is accessible offline is ... incredible, even to this day. It's what has powered the direct marketing revolution for decades.
So while I don't think people understand the details of how things work online I think they have an intuitive sense that the same way they get targeted offline is what happens to them online.
Facebook is actually letting people marry the offline and online information which I find super intriguing yet goes relatively unnoticed.
And I'm still shocked that we willingly present ID when we buy something with a credit card since we're not really required to do so.
Going slow wouldn't be a bad thing but I actually think we've been doing that already.
I disagree, there are plenty of examples were groups of users will make poor decisions about how they would like things to work. Gaming and security are two things that come to mind immediately.
You can pull in examples from all over the place but the context is if a user demands privacy over customized search results then google has no business second guessing that users decision.
The Ads Preference manager is fairly straight-forward (www.google.com/ads/preferences) and more people who go there change settings rather than opt-out.
The full opt-out instructions (http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&a...) are a bit tougher. Should they make it easier to do this? Maybe.
But if you make it too easy, you get false positives and then people may become upset that Google isn't as useful as it once was not fully understanding that it was their own preference to do so, right?
Tracking will merrily continue.
And if you fall for that what do you think the general public will do?
For those that get to the Ad Preferences page the stats are pretty interesting.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/clarifying-valleywag-comments/
The general public when presented with this doesn't seem to have such a drastic reaction.