Exactly ... and you're proposing to use the government (expanding it's survaillance, btw) to hold back these private corporate surveillances ?
Many of de Tocqueville's objections don't really apply to this situation by the way:
1) google isn't pervasive, nor is facebook or amazon. In reality there's many thousands of search providers. Most are far worse than Google, Amazon, Facebook in the tracking department, and some are more-or-less government departments
2) "when it languishes, everything around must languish, ..." this is a complaint about lack of competition, and this online space isn't lacking for competition at all.
And lastly, I do wonder what you think about the alternative I think you're proposing. Having the government provide and regulate these services. I might argue that that would be far worse in the surveillance department, but we could also just observe that there are 2 countries that actually do this. Russia with Yandex, and China with Baidu. Both are more-or-less government departments. Both governments' security departments feel the need to have people's search terms associated with their names available for the secret service and the police is a necessity. It is not hard to find online reports of western security services asking for and getting access to entire browsing histories [1], so realistically under a government search engine they'd get search term surveillance. Do you think people using these search engines that just report everything to the government are better off, surveillance-wise ... or worse ? Because that's what would happen under your proposed alternative.
It's sad, but realistically the only alternative available under the current governments, in the US, or in Europe, or anywhere else for that matter with one or two exceptions, is government surveillance instead of splintered private surveillance. I think I'll take the private option, thanks.
[1] It's browsing history, not search history, but ...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/30/police-seek-...
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/01/govern...
No. Re-read what I wrote.
I don't rely on recommendation systems or past activity. I search specifically for what I want and find it without difficultly. I don't need to be told what I want. I don't see the value in being babysat or shepherded by an algorithm.
To quote Alexis de Tocqueville from his book Democracy in America (a bit out of context):
"What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?"
He was talking about the government. But in a world of massive and pervasive corporate surveillance and in a world of advertising more finely tuned to manipulation, I think we can also apply the quote to the likes of Google and Amazon.