This is huge. I can't even count how many times I've argued about privacy with Googlers and run into "trust me, we take this very seriously, but I can't say anything about it". We're asked to share everything with them, but these tech companies are incredibly, incredibly secretive, all under the guise of protecting their interests from competition.

People in support of these companies running people's lives are all in favor of transparency and sharing on the Internet... until it gets turned around on them. For all it's other faults, The Circle movie captured this perfectly with one line from Tom Hanks: "We are so f###ed."

Maybe I wouldn't be so bothered by Google knowing where I am every five minutes if I could track Larry Page and Eric Schmidt in near realtime too.

If you don't trust Google to broker your data, you can definitely build your own system to do it. You are then merely faced with two challenges:

1) You'll be recapitulating years of work by dedicated, paid teams to do the sort of data-brokering Google will give you for free. 2) If you want your work to be useful (because as we know, the real value of shared data is in the sharing), you'll need to convince your friends (and friends-of-friends) that your data-sharing solution---your "tracks you every five minutes, but you can see where everyone else being tracked is"---is safer and more trustworthy than Google's.

But nothing's stopping you from trying to solve (1) and (2).

As you just pointed out, the latter thing is, in fact, exactly what prevents you from simply building your own system: The network effect. It's why it's very unlikely anything but large governments like the US and the EU are capable of restraining Google's behavior. (Smaller governments are not able to, as Google would simply refuse to operate in those localities until the government caved to public pressure to stop "banning Google".)

I'd also caution you from describing Google's services as "free". The cost is huge, it's just not a cost you pay in dollars.

Enumerate the cost and I can reduce it to dollar-equivalents based upon my experience and preferences.

I suspect it's pretty close to free for me.