With the NSA at least theoretically we have congressional oversight. The same can't be said for Google and most of the other companies we trust with our data. Their level of access may be comparable with the NSA but there are few if any legal protections or opportunities for oversight. If the same abuses were happening, they might never come to light. With the big companies, we might only ever be able to speculate.

> Windows Phone YouTube app blocking

Wasn't the issue that the app displayed the YouTube videos without the advertisements though, and this was against the Terms of Service?

I'm usually surprised by the depths of cynicism I find at large corporations, not by their altruistic goody-two-shoes-ness.

Google would be remiss if it wasn't trading against the massive wealth of data it has. They're probably not mining email (though they could use a proxy and look at the frequency of particular ads' being displayed in Gmail), and probably have a privacy line, somewhere, that they're unwilling to cross. But I'd be surprised if most people ended up being comfortable with that line's placement. And it's not like we have any way of knowing where it is.

Well, you are right that I do not have any evidence, and I am basically just spreading a rumor. However, the rumor originated from my former line manager back when I worked in the fund management industry, so it is not totally implausible for it to have some basis in truth. Also, Google does make investments beyond it's Google Ventures operation: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a7cZr...