I'm not sure if you guys thought about it yet, but ... why is Google sooo desperate to invade all these areas??
Has anyone else asked for example, how much data Google must on hold on us already. Almost every website we visit (doubleclick / analytics / captcha / search http referer), and even more so if you use Chrome (browser fingerprinting). They probably know more about us than we do about our ownselves.
Think about it, they also know our video interests (YouTube), our friends (Android / G+ / Mail), our jobs, wives, children, where we live (maps / search), exactly where we are at all times of day (Android), they probably even know if any one of us is cheating on our wives!!
They probably also know our shopping habits (Google Checkout / Analytics / Android / NFC) and I think they're still more interested in invading this area by releasing their own Visa/MasterCard like solution.
It's scary the amount of info we leave around the web, and especially kids nowadays, their entire lives are on the web, so it's very easy to see how a particular person is growing through time, their interests, and what they're up to.
The perfect tool for the CIA
I was working for a holiday company, and as an experiment, I wanted to know how much info I could gather on a football player who used our site.
I used browser fingerprinting and http referers to track his girlfriend around our entire site, seeing where she moved her mouse and even how long she spent looking at each page.
I got information on her previous visits (based on the browser fingerprint and web logs), and later, info on exactly where the football player lives, who he's related to and visiting on the holiday, his kids and ages, his girlfriends age.
It was getting scary and felt creepy, so I stopped. But I'm pretty sure, if I had a tiny tracker/script on most websites around the world (like Google Analytics / DoubleClick / captcha), I could track their movements and everything they read/saw on the web. Not only that, but using a bit of JavaScript and and AJAX, it also very easy to snipe on any details they type on any form.
People complain about Facebook privacy, but as I see it, it super easy to block, just block Facebook.com and fbcdn.net or whatever and they won't know anything about you, but unfortunately Google has acquired so many different companies around the globe it's difficult/impossible to get away from them.
If you made it this far, sorry about the essay!