and, At this point what difference does it make?

Oh. Nature does not matter.
Remember. Until humans came along temperatures on the earth were stable and no species ever went extinct.
We are evil.

Bend over for what?
The info is out there and is is combined and they know A LOT.
Google has a bit more fully combined, but they do not sell it off. They keep it very private.
So far they give you ...
The most benefit from your data.
The best control over your data.
The best care over your data.
The most evil thing they do is ad targeting.
First. They do not sell the raw data to their advertisers. They only do targeted ads.
You can like them or dislike them. Some people feel a bit creeped out by it. Some are prefer targeted ads over non targeted.
You are already being bent over by Bing, Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay, and countless others. Google is at least using some lube.

Go you your dashboard.
Under web search. Remove those searches from you history.
Google will no longer use those searches in targeting ads to you. Simple.

Who has the Google one stop shop sold all this info to?
As far as I know that information is kept by Google. They have never sold any of. They use it to target the ads you buy better.
They use it to create new products and improve existing ones. They also use that data to kill of some of the stuff they did that I liked. :(
Those disparate databases you feel so safe with are not so hard to combine. In fact people have brought loads of it together to individually identify people accross many websites building very accurate and scary profiles on people. This data has been and will continue to be SOLD.
So...That cat is out of the bag.

Unless you are a full fledged internet master and work hard at staying anonymous and have been doing so for years, internet privacy is not a choice you have.
You need to use many different VPNs ,change your habits often and stay on a disinformation campaign or you simply do not have privacy when it comes to the internet. Period.

So you are either misinformed or naive.

Fucking AWESOME!
Sure. Microsoft does not use the information they have from windows, bing, office, live, xbox to target ads or to sell.

You can be wary of Google if you want. But that line right there makes you either retarded or a shill.
You choose.

Either way the big news here is this ...
EA did something that was not completely and truly horrible!

That is news.

If you have a Google account.
Go here.
Once you see that you can see exactly what Google knows, and that you can have control over who can see it you will not worry as much.
Google has more info than anyone else, but many places have a lot of info on you. Most hide what they know about you and many sell the raw info.
Google, So far, only uses the info to target ads to you. Not really a bad thing. I would rather see a targeted ad than one for Maxipads or Viagra.
Google also give you quite a bit of control over it. The major plus though is that they do not split it up and make it difficult for you.
Google search, Play store, YouTube, Google Plus, Gmail, Drive and more. All those settings, all that information displayed for you to control in one place.
Name someone else that does that for you.

You really think that Google has the luxury of not caring?
They have to care. If they allow this app, they set up the next Viacom, Sony, RIAA and MPAA suit against them.
 

To be fair.

As a sysadmin for a mid sized company looking to get a proprietary ICS from a major powerhouse ...
Are they going to give you access to the source? If not, How exactly are you supposed to know the weaknesses of the system without some real hardcore testing?
Read the literature and take their word for it?

Oh. You just want to be cool and say something anti American. Go on then.

Your liberal roots are showing.
Politicians are for the most part "FOR" what will get them elected.
Being an idiot about wanting to restrict stuff is not a conservative only area of expertise.

Gun control ????

or ... Even better.

Anyone here remember Tipper Gore?
 

To put it the correct way.

Google does not want an app out there that comes standard that downloads all their videos.

You can understand that. Right?

It is possible.
Those engineers also would have needed to be aware of every Microsoft program that used those unpublished APIs so they could give them a heads up.
Or. Engineers in completely different parts of Microsoft not only found the hidden APIs and started using them but magically made changes to the software that would have broken with the API changes that so happened to work around the problems that would have come up under the neew "unpublished" changes to those APIs.

It is much more possible that the system was designed to give Office and IE a leg up.

Really? No. It is not needed. Everyone here that is not a shill knows that Microsoft, Apple and Google want money.

Of the 3. Google has been, So far, the least evil.

No. We do not fail to see how that is a problem.
A lack of real freedom with information kinda sucks.
This does not give Microsoft the right to do whatever they want.
Once Microsoft added the ability to download the videos directly that was Microsoft being an asshole about it.

What we all want is some good shit. Agreed.
It does not mean that we have an inherent right to what we would like.