[shantly]

1) That can change at any time,

2) Those data are never going away, and may not (=will not) belong to Google forever,

3) Data that exists can be demanded by the government, justly or otherwise, and they will get it—private companies running a dragnet spy operation on everyone is only marginally better than the government doing the same directly,

4) Targeted ads are adversarial. So are ads in general, really—yes I know they can be useful but I'm talking in general, and in practice—but it's definitely more off-putting to be spied on then have that information used against you.

5) Google's incentives suck, their ethics suck, and I don't trust one bit that they won't do all kinds of nasty shit with the data they've collected the moment that looks like it's best for their bottom line.

[jasonvorhe]

1) why would a company remove that systems? They've been practically leak free since they started. Why risk the public outcry if a junior developer walks out with a couple of terabytes of personal data because they loosened access to such data without any clear advantage?

[pfortuny]

Because they are compelled by a different government from the present one.

[ok_coo]

One quick and easy example is China.

To echo what someone else said further up the thread, the fact that they have the data is a liability to people. Policies and protocols can change over time. Just because they have great data access protocols in place now doesn't mean it will always be that way.

What happens when the temptation for more profit becomes too great? There are plenty of companies who have (unknowingly) killed their golden goose for short-term profit.