[sumeno]

Is there any evidence that Google has a shadow profile for people? I know that it was revealed that Facebook did/does and everyone assumed that Google probably does too but I don't think I've ever seen evidence that this is the case.

Disclosure: I work for Google, but I'm genuinely curious. I've seen no evidence of "shadow profiles" but it is a big company so I couldn't say for sure one way or another.

[xbkingx]

When they launched Wave there were reports of all kinds of chaos because people were automatically added. I don't remember if this was a case of "oh, you had this contact? We'll add them to your friends automatically." or those people crossed some classification threshold, but there were cases of stalkers and abusive exes being added without permission.

I think the chances that Google had some type of profiling system for non users is well above 80%.