Google have indexed the Internet. They have indexed public roads (Street View). Both things are pretty useful. Pretty cool.
The issue now is they want to index people.. pretty creepy. This can be seen with Google+ and the various inflexible policies it has towards Google accounts. Is Google "person search" really that far off? Already you can email anyone with a Google account right(?) How long before you put in a name and a town and you get Google+, Facebook, Twitter profiles along with posts related to that user from their public names and confirmed alias.
The only way to opt out is to destroy your Google account which is a shame as gmail + docs are pretty awesome. I don't know how that would affect Android for the day to day user.
Primarily only by not being able to use the play store, and having to disable the 'Google Contacts Sync' to store numbers locally without having google sniff them.
Make a gmail account, add no personal data, and use it only for the playstore, and problem solved.
It's really pissing me off that in CM11 (Android 4.4?), when I go to add a contact, the message is "your new contact will be synchronized with <google account>". As far as I can tell, the option to store numbers locally has been intentionally hidden (the only way I can think of to do it is create the information on a different phone, export it to a contacts file, and transfer the file...).
The issue now is they want to index people.. pretty creepy. This can be seen with Google+ and the various inflexible policies it has towards Google accounts. Is Google "person search" really that far off? Already you can email anyone with a Google account right(?) How long before you put in a name and a town and you get Google+, Facebook, Twitter profiles along with posts related to that user from their public names and confirmed alias.
The only way to opt out is to destroy your Google account which is a shame as gmail + docs are pretty awesome. I don't know how that would affect Android for the day to day user.