"I've generally tried to keep a low profile online and until recently there's been very little information about me available from the major search engines."
This is your problem. If the only thing about you on the web is this report from fifteen years ago, that's the only thing prospective employers are going to find on Google. Start a blog, use your real name in discussion groups, write letters to the editor, start a StackOverflow account under your own name (this is my highest ranking Google hit). You've got to put good stuff about you on the web if you want to drown out the bad stuff.
But, hey! What happens when StackOverflow folds (which it will, eventually)?
Then, suddenly, all the knowledge contracts and contracts to a single point until it goes "POOF!" - nada, zero.
Actually, all the content on StackOverflow is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-Wiki license. They make monthly dumps of the entire question and answer database available. If SO ever folds, it would be quite easy to use the data dump to put up a new site with all the accumulated knowledge
But looking closer, it seems to be a showcase for their business selling the software to run the site.
StackOverflow has been running for over a year, long before Jeff and Joel thought about selling hosted version. StackExchange is basically a way to shut up everyone who kept asking for a "Stack Overflow on Topic X".
'Google employees can read your stuff'
Even if these clients are currently running their own e-mail server, employees at the local ISP could use DPI to read their stuff. Anything you send on the internet that isn't encrypted can be read by lots of different people at lots of different points. Unless the clients are currently encrypting their e-mails, I don't see any privacy reason not to use gmail.
These Terms of Service apply to the executable code version of Google Chrome. Source code for Google Chrome is available free of charge under open source software license agreements at http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html.
The EULA only applies to the compiled binaries that Google distributes. The source code is licensed under BSD.
Where there's a will, there's a relative.