[travjones]

They are for sure. It's like if you fart and instead of owning up to your smelly fart you say, "Ewww. Who farted?" Or, you blame the fart on another person (in this case, Google) to distract people from identifying you as the smelly farter.

[headShrinker]

Huh, the fart metaphor really doesn't hold up all.

[travjones]

Yeah, you're probably right. I won't quit my day job. I saw farting as the collection of user data described in the article and thought the analogy was kind of funny.