There are two possible explanations. Maybe the reason why I want to keep these things private is that they're flat out illegal. Child pornography, for instance. But maybe the reason is simply that I feel ashamed or uncomfortable - e.g., herpes medication, unusual fetishes or the Perl documentation.
Are you seriously telling me that I have to be open about everything I do, and that when I don't want to, then I'm doing something illegal or morally objectionable?
Wow.
"If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines - including Google - do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."
So in context, he's basically saying that of course if you're logged into google, surfing from your same home IP, well duh, of course Google, or the government, or your ISP, or some random hacker can figure it out. You can't guarantee privacy without using something like Tor.
"Maybe you shouldn't do it [...on Google]. Or, [...on the internet]. Or [...in a way that people can find out].
The idea is that privacy is difficult on the Internet: your ISP knows what you're doing, your search engine knows what you're doing, etc.
So doing something online without telling someone about it is really really hard. So if you don't want someone to know about it, basically your only choice is to not do it [online].
It's not that creepy and it's not the typical privacy fallacy everyone thinks it is (the "if you're not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to hide" bullshit)
I read Eric's answer along the lines of "Look, as CEO of the company, I think it's important to know that treating Google as your best friend would have limitations, specifically (the whole Patriot Act stuff)."
That's basically impossible, and that's what Eric is saying. If you're searching for something, by definition you are telling someone about it: Google. If you're telling Google, and the FBI comes knocking on Google's doors, Google will comply.
Eric is saying: if you don't want to tell everyone a secret, then don't tell us.
No on both accounts. I did not suggest or say that you had to share everything you do. Not even close. I also didn't come anywhere close to suggesting that if you don't want people finding out what you are doing it's wrong. I'd avoid the straw man if I where you. =)
What I am saying is that if you do something, chances are someone can find out. It's as simple as that.
Let's go with your herpes medication that you buy that you don't want any to find out about. If you don't want anyone to find out about you buying herpes medicine, don't buy any. Otherwise, someone is going to find out. In this case, it will be the company that sells you the herpes medicine at the very least.
Hopefully this clears things up.
It's true. It's creepy, but only if you forget that it's reality. People took this quote to mean so much more than it did.
I'm not saying as CEO he shouldn't be careful of what he says, but at least he's saying something, rather than just speaking about vertically integrated forward-thinking active promotions across multiple wide-vector-outreach systems leveraging past-promised and future-potential market segments.