Among other differences, your relationship with Google is consensual, or at least largely so. The most extensive data collection Google does requires you to explicitly interact with its properties; tracking via ads and embeds often enables the sites you visit to sustain themselves, and, even if you want to quibble about how "consensual" that is, is trivially mitigated via free, brain-dead-simple browser extensions.
Put another way: you can enjoy the internet yet have little or no data go to Google. You cannot use the internet or the telephone in the US (and even, to an extent, in many foreign countries!) without data going to the NSA, with questionable benefit to you.
>Put another way: you can enjoy the internet yet have little or no data go to Google.
I'm not so sure about this. adwords/gAnalytics/some google tracking property is present on something like 40% of sites So they can see you leave one tracked property A, they may not know where B is, and then can pick up tracking you when visit C and then learn about B because of referrer data.
Not really...You talk about being tracked by Google in the same breath that you talk about the relationship being consensual. If you have to work to prevent tracking because you don't want to and can't stop the tracking by simply saying Do Not Track, then its not very good informed consent
> tracking via ads and embeds often enables the sites you visit to sustain themselves, and, even if you want to quibble about how "consensual" that is, is trivially mitigated via free, brain-dead-simple browser extensions
So I addressed both its existence and the fact that there are issues regarding just how "consensual" the practice is. I concede that perhaps I should have used a term other than "quibble".
Put another way: you can enjoy the internet yet have little or no data go to Google. You cannot use the internet or the telephone in the US (and even, to an extent, in many foreign countries!) without data going to the NSA, with questionable benefit to you.
edit: typo