Hi Nathan, I just wanted to point out that is different to try to hide something from the NSA and from Google, I didn't mean to say that is good or bad to hide things from Google when using their services.
That said, I can imagine someone who wants to use a search engine that he doesn't trust (because the results are better but wants to keep his privacy): for example a girl may want to search for pregnancy tests but she may dislike to be later targeted by ads about that.
You are right that one could simply avoid the service or at least avoid to be logged in, but most people are oblivious of these things.
Yeah, I can understand going in and deleting specific things in your history if Google keeps serving you ads about them. But turning off the entire history seems like overkill.
(And your point about hiding from the NSA vs. Google is what I was trying to get at in my comment above, which for some reason got downvoted quite heavily).
That said, I can imagine someone who wants to use a search engine that he doesn't trust (because the results are better but wants to keep his privacy): for example a girl may want to search for pregnancy tests but she may dislike to be later targeted by ads about that.
You are right that one could simply avoid the service or at least avoid to be logged in, but most people are oblivious of these things.