Privacy 2.0: Is Google still not evil?

A follow up on "What is the price of our Privacy?"

• Privacy and the "Nothing to Hide" Argument (schneier.com)
  
• Privacy and the "Nothing To Hide" Argument (slashdot.com)
  
• The Eternal Value of Privacy (wired.com)
• Privacy is a Biological Imperative? (slashdot.com)
  
• A Study on The Value of Location Privacy (buslab.org)
  

Especially the comments to these articles are sometimes very interesting. Some of the answers to "If you are not doing anything wrong, then you have no nothing to hide" I liked were:

• If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me.
• Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition.
• Because you might do something wrong with my information.
• Who watches the watchers?
• Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Well, datamining is not bad as long the process is transparent. It can benefit technology and our society as long as certain lines are not crossed. Google has been criticized a lot these last months for their retention policy. They have claimed that this was only according to the European Dataretention Policy. But the E.U. Data Directive doesn't require to keep this information. This Wired article investigates the claims:

There is no United States or E.U. law that requires Google to keep detailed logs of what individuals search for and click on at Google's search engine. It's simply dishonest to continually imply otherwise in order to hide the real political and monetary reasons that Google chooses to hang onto this data.

The article touches upon an interesting detail: If they lived up to their "Don't be evil" mantra, they could give us some options like "Keep my data for 18 months" to "Clean out my data weekly. I'm not interested in personalization.".
Very good suggestions. Give us the option to control the data about us. Those who want "enhanced" searches can still have it. It's the default setting anyway.

Bonus: Google Knows All, Or Close Enough To Raise Concerns (CNNMoney.com)
Bonus: Google Odyssey 2012 - "I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that" (marketingpilgrim.com)