A hear a lot of complaining recently about Google and Facebook and how evil they might be, and how they are taking over the world, and invading your privacy, and blah blah blah.
News flash: using a credit card is far more invasive of your privacy than anything on the internet. They know everything about you at Visa, and they sell it to everybody else. It has been going on for a long time, and you don't seem to care. Facebook has very little information, comparatively. Quit worrying about it.
The internet is the TV of the new generation. Remember when hippies were yelling about turning off the "boob tube" and how it was rotting our collective brains and how TV alone would destroy modern civilization? Farmville is equivalent to "Green Acres". The internet is equivalent to TV -- it is an entertainment medium, supported by advertising. The only real difference is that TV has become really expensive (yet still ad-supported) and the internet is still mostly free. Though I suppose Comcast has their hands in both of those pockets, don't they?
You don't have to use Google search, or Gmail, or Google Calendars, or any of the rest of it. You don't. But you can if you want to, and it's [mostly] free, so why not?
It's just that simple. People need to shut up and make their choices. Watch TV if you want to. Create a Tumblr if you want to. And if you don't want to, or are worried about your privacy, then don't.
