I am from germany and grew up in the former DDR - however I can clearly see the difference between a government secretly using extensive surveillance to control people and a feature in a service that everyone is free to opt-out of (street view, not facebook photo tags - you should really have to opt-in to the latter). My argument is not about agreeing or disagrreing with street view though. I'm just disappointed with the widespread misinformation that surrounded the whole issue - some people literally assumed that street view would be a live feed into their homes. The media should have done a better job at educating people.
Generally there is a lot of bias against Google over here. This goes as far as publishers and newspapers heavy lobbying for a law that would force Google to pay for indexing content excerpts in Google News. And they almost got away with it. Of course as a publisher you were able to configure how and if Google should index your content (Headline only, headline + excerpt, full content or no indexing at all). However as you can imagine publishers weren't interested in that but preferred Google to pay for referring users to their content. It's insane.
The picture of Google that is painted here doesn't feel fair at all. Of course it's ok to disagree with Google's data collecting behaviour - you're free to use alternative services, there are enough options. But selling targeted ads simply is their business. Think about the alternative: Let's assume Google didn't collect that data - they still need to display ads though. Ads are still ads, but now they are a lot less relevant to you and simply guessing what you might be interested in.
The problem is you can't truly opt out: other people opt you in by using the service. Don't want Google to have your address? Tough, your friend gave it to them in their address book. Want to keep your birthday private? Same problem. Photos? Untag them, but they still know you were tagged. Don't want to untag? Disable it, but they still know it's you.
A friend sharing my information is a totally different scenario. That person would have been entrusted with your information only after your consent. Since there is no legal obligation on his or her part to keep the information private (there is of course some social obligation) the person had every right to share it with others and on Facebook or Google. Unfortunately we are just beginning to realize the issues with such an open system where detailed documentation has just started, how we go from here is totally up to us. But I don't think we can hold Facebook or Google legally responsible for what our friends are doing, at least not yet.
Users might not be even aware of how the data is being shared, or if it's being shared at all.
I signed up to Facebook under a pseudonym recently, but with an old work email address. I only wanted it as a throwaway account. The auto friend suggests were there soon enough and uncanny. It took me a few moments to realise the links had been made through my email address. I had not shared address book data.
It became apparent that the suggestions were a result of other people's address books (not necessarily friends as it was a work address.)
Some suggestions were a bit of an enigma. I'm not sure how Facebook draws up these connections but I guess they'd taken friends of friends of those that had me listed in their address books.
What surprised me was that the address book data shared from the other accounts, was obviously kept with Facebook for later use. For some reason I thought it would be used once then thrown away (how naive of me.) It felt a little inappropriate to say the least. I felt my addressbook had been mysteriously revealed. This could potentially be abused (not sure if the suggestions came up, before I verified the address.)
Soon after, one of those suggested friends tried to friend me. I guess my account came up as a suggestion to them. A little revealing. I should have used a new email address to sign up I guess.
Generally there is a lot of bias against Google over here. This goes as far as publishers and newspapers heavy lobbying for a law that would force Google to pay for indexing content excerpts in Google News. And they almost got away with it. Of course as a publisher you were able to configure how and if Google should index your content (Headline only, headline + excerpt, full content or no indexing at all). However as you can imagine publishers weren't interested in that but preferred Google to pay for referring users to their content. It's insane.
The picture of Google that is painted here doesn't feel fair at all. Of course it's ok to disagree with Google's data collecting behaviour - you're free to use alternative services, there are enough options. But selling targeted ads simply is their business. Think about the alternative: Let's assume Google didn't collect that data - they still need to display ads though. Ads are still ads, but now they are a lot less relevant to you and simply guessing what you might be interested in.