This is why Google is working on project Loon. IMO, if it succeeds it will be the coolest and most impactful thing Google has ever done... and I include the search engine.

It would if Google looked. I'm sure Google's enterprise agreements state that Google will hold the customer's information confidential and will not use it except in defined ways that have to do with providing the service. Getting caught violating such agreements -- or even suspected of violating such agreements -- would be far more harmful to Google's business than any benefit that could be derived, not to mention the fact that it would violate Google's own code of conduct. Individual employees could peek and try to misuse the data, but Google is quite careful to secure the data and to audit access, and all Google employees are told in strong words at the beginning of their employment that inappropriately access customer data (even the employee's own!) is grounds for immediate termination.

Google takes security and confidentiality seriously, and has apparently done a good job of convincing its many enterprise customers that it does so.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google, though the above is my own opinions and perceptions and does not represent any sort of official communication. It's just me talking.)

That's one way to view it. Another is that choices have to be made, and Google chooses to optimize for the many rather than the few.

It's only complicated for the power users. For most people -- who don't type hostnames and rely on DNS automatic domain suffixing to turn them into the correct URL -- the heuristics do an excellent job of doing the right thing... and when they get it wrong the generally fail on the side of searching, which then lets the search engine pick up the slack, because people usually find that the top result is the URL they were trying to type.

It think it works really well for the common case, and reasonably well for the uncommon case.

When you type the hostname you should see a box pop down below the location bar that has two lines with what you've typed. One has a "page" icon and one has a magnifying glass. The former will try to use the text as a URL, the later will search for it using your default search engine. If you hit enter, whichever one of those lines is on top will be the action taken. Chrome tries to guess which one you most likely want using some heuristics, which in the case of abbreviated internal names general get the wrong answer, so the search line will be on top. If you hit the down arrow, though, it'll highlight the one with the page icon and hitting enter then will interpret your text as a hostname.

Another tip: If there are some hosts that you go to frequently, add them to your list of custom search engines and give them nice shortcuts. For example, I often use "teams.corp.google.com" (Google's internal white pages) to look people up. I could type "teams" and rely on default DNS suffixing to expand that out, but then I run into the exact problem you mention, requiring me to type "teams" then hit the down arrow, then return. Instead, I added it as a custom search engine with the shortcut 't'. So I just hit 't' then space then enter, and I'm there. In that case, teams actually is a search engine, so I can also type 't', then a name then enter, and it'll do a search. But I use the same thing for some internal hosts I hit frequently that aren't search engines.

Ah, well, I'll call a press conference so you can explain that to everyone. I'm sure they'll all be enlightened, and no one will disagree.

It is.

SSL/TLS creates an encrypted stream on top of the TCP stream, and the HTTP data is all transported over that. So URL, headers, body... everything is all secured.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security

False. "War against jihadis" is what is going on. No-one is waging war against Muslims. While jihadis are all Muslim, not all Muslims are jihadis (thank goodness! look at how great the people in Egyptian and Turkey are as they struggle for freedom using peaceful protest). It would be better of people stopped using words like "holocaust" and "genocide" when they don't match their defined uses. Leave it for the real thing, please. Killing a few thousand barbaric jihadis is not a "holocaust" in any way (like the Jewish Holocaust in Europe, or the Armenian Genocide etc). It is simply a fight between 21st Century Enlightenment Culture defending itself from jihadis that would like to replace it with a supremacist 7th Century Culture (under the Islamic poltical order and Sharia - their stated goals).

This isn't a tax, it's an insurance premium. And why shouldn't those who make lifestyle choices which reduce their expected claims be able to get a better price? I also get a better price on my homeowner's insurance by installing handrails and smoke alarms, and by building outside of flood plains and tornado zones, and I get discounts on my auto insurance because my kids get good grades (which insurers have found is strongly correlated with safe driving among youth) and because I don't drive a sports car.

Individual choices affect the likelihood of catastrophic events, and it's perfectly reasonable to me that choices that decrease expected costs should lower premiums.

Now, whether or not smoking actually increases expected costs is a valid question. The research I've seen shows that the lifetime medical costs for smokers tends to be lower than for non-smokers, because smokers die younger and faster, and long-term care for the healthy as they slowly fade away gets really expensive. But if smoking does actually increase costs, why shouldn't smokers pay higher premiums?

Even better if you get involved earlier than the primaries... pick a party -- either party -- and go to your local caucus meetings and help influence the selection of the representatives to state caucuses who have real influence on what candidates appear on the primary ballots.

Does anyone know how this proposal relates to Google's work on SPDY and QUIC? SPDY does multiplexing, and QUIC extends that to essentially re-implement TCP in a fashion that is optimized for web traffic.

I should go read the spec, but I'm hoping that someone who already has will post a summary.

Google backed off on that policy, FYI. There are lots of pseudonyms on Google+.

I really like that I can do a search on my desktop, then later when I'm out, say, driving to the place I searched for, I can repeat the search on my phone with a single character, or even less, because my phone knows what I searched for on the desktop. YMMV.

Do you have any examples of where Google has disclosed or otherwise behaved irresponsibly with user data? I think Google is very careful to maintain user privacy. But -- as I already said -- I'm biased. (Aside: you might point at PRISM as an example of misbehavior, assuming you think Google's statements about that are lies. I think Google is being truthful.)

That's certainly your prerogative. Personally, based on the exposure I've had to said intentions, I have strong confidence in Larry Page. Execution may not always match intentions, of course, and there is always the possibility that eventually other leadership will take over (though given the stock voting structure that's not going to happen until Page and Brin decide to allow it), but for the foreseeable future I don't see Google turning evil.

But, if you disagree Google enables you to opt out. In some cases that means not using Google services, of course, because that's the deal: you get those services in exchange for allowing Google to show you targeted ads, and accurate targeting requires Google to know something about you. Google wants you to make an informed decision on that deal, and wants to make its services so valuable to you -- and the risk so low, through careful stewardship of your data -- that you like the deal. But if you don't, you absolutely should opt out.

So, delete your Google+ profile, and avoid doing whatever you did to create it. Or, if you prefer, delete your Google account, or just remove it from your phone/tablet. It's your choice.

That's the mother who chose to create the fetus, or at least made decisions she knew had a significant likelihood of creating it, right? I, personally, don't have a strong stake in this argument either way, but your statement ignores some pretty strong moral arguments that are based on responsibility. Granted there are cases where the mother is not responsible (e.g. rape), and responsibility-based arguments don't hold up there. There are also arguments based on the fact that carrying the child to term and then giving it up for adoption represents a relatively mild imposition on a healthy woman, while termination is a rather more severe imposition on the fetus.

Anyway, my point is that your statement is one-sided and debatable... which is why it is so heavily debated.