[nozepas]

Of course one should be 'worried' about privacy with his/her data on facebook, but i don't think one should care less with the information google has about a huge amount of people.

Just as a reminder: they know what you look for on the web (google itself), they know what you talk to your friends (gtalk), they know what you get via email (gmail), they know what videos you watch to (on youtube) and they now even have a browser which is being adopted by a lot of people pretty fast.

Maybe one does not use all those services but many people do, and depending on how you look at it, probably google has a lot of more 'private' information about one's life than facebook.

That, of course, doesn't mean 'FB disconnect' is a bad idea. It's just that i get 'scared' when someone who know a lot about you (google in this case) build something trying to look as they 'protect your privacy'... (i also keep in mind that google is not prone to providing data about users, but they have the ability to)

[Kliment]

Do note this was neither sanctioned nor designed by Google. The guy who built it just happens to work there.

[kmavm]

Even before Chrome, they know what you read on a very wide cross-section of the web, too, thanks to the AdSense pixel.

[revorad]

Why is it bad if google or facebook know a lot about people? Can you give me some examples?

[pyre]

Pooling all of that information into one place is begging for it to be abused. Would you still be asking the same question if it was s/Facebook/NSA/g or s/Google/FBI/g or even s/Google/KGB/g? Once all of this information is in place how hard do you think it will be for such organizations to get access to it? Just because the 'big bad guberment' isn't the one doing the collecting doesn't mean that the information cannot be abused internally, or externally to the company compiling it.

[revorad]

Usually these discussions sound like some people are worried that the corporations themselves will do something bad with the data (sell you more stuff you like !gasp!).

Government misusing data is the only thing I could think of. But what's the evidence for that fear? If the organisations you mention wanted to go after people, can't they already do so?

With this kind of reasoning, the internet itself should qualify as a huge setback to privacy. The point is that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

[acqq]

Maybe a Facebook engineer will make "Google disconnect" now?

[rquirk]

I disabled my FB account back in May, but I'd find it quite difficult to do without all the Google services I use. Google Reader in particular.