I knew this would be a Declan McCullagh article before I clicked through.

To be fair, McCullagh isn't writing this piece as propaganda for Google. He has strong, pre-existing, libertarian/pro-corporate beliefs, including the one that government privacy regulations are right up there with genocide and mandatory abortions for everyone. He has never written an article where he saw benefit in "privacy", nor will he ever.

So, yes, he's distorting the picture and propagandizing about the death of privacy. But he's doing it to push his own beliefs, and not Google's.