Google does say that your privacy is important to the company, and it has made some steps in this area. Google says it keeps only 18 months of search data, and that data is completely anonymous. The company is also careful to point to its privacy policy for every single Google product on its Web pages. But it's important to note that many of Google's privacy measures were introduced only after public outcry, including a request to .

In fact, you could argue that Google is fundamentally reluctant to respect privacy in preference of innovation. According to a blog post entitled "," the company said, "Although [anonymizing search server logs] was good for privacy, it was a difficult decision because the routine server log data we collect has always been a critical ingredient of innovation."

That's a fair argument, since a lot can be learned from how people behave on the Web. If you combine a large body of data about user behavior with Google's massive computing power, you can see how Google could get an excellent sense of how to shape its products to meet user needs.

But then again, companies were innovating with focus groups and opt-in monitoring programs for decades and they fared pretty well. Personally, I'd prefer that Google and other online companies stopped tracking my cyber-behavior even if that did mean we'd see less innovation from these companies.

Google has a lot of handy services, but as the company gains more and more information from its users, those users may raise even more questions about how big Google should be allowed to get, and whether the government needs to step in and strictly regulate how Google's overwhelming amount of information is used.