It's really not so simple as to not use Google services or turn on Firefoxes privacy mode, to opt out of being tracked by Google. Google tracks people's online behavior by IP address. So every time you do a search with Google, logged in or not, they track where you surf to and log it by IP address. But even if you don't use Google for search at all, you still get tracked in many instances. A huge percentage of web sites embeds Google Analytics code in them. Another nice "free" service Google gives away that lets web sites track their usage statistics. But it also allows Google to track anyone who visits those websites, crossreference it by IP address, and add the information to their data base. So you can opt not to use any Google services at all and Google is still compiling a large data base of your web behavior.

Sooner or later you do something online that also allows Google to figure out who you actually are (name, address). It doesn't take that much information to uniquely identify someone. Then that goes into their data base too and even if you change IP addresses, they can eventually figure out that it's the same person and that gets cross referenced too.

Completely turning off javascript can stop some of this tracking. But then the web ceases to function as you and I know it. So you may as well just stop surfing altogether.

So there is a real privacy concern here. If people don't care, fine. But there's no reason to mock those who do care. One of the problems is that even if Google does not abuse this information and only uses it for commercial purposes, it doesn't mean that others won't eventually abuse this information. I've seen political scientists and historians talk about this and make the simple point that if you look at history, every time someone has amassed this kind of massive database of information about individuals, eventually it gets abused. It's too tempting, especially for governments, to subpoena or seize the information and use it for their own purposes. It has already been revealed that tens of thousands of secret subpoenas have been issued in the U.S., under the Patriot Act, to carry out investigations that have nothing to do with terrorism. That makes these subpoenas illegal under the Patriot Act, but since a secret court oversees them and they can't be reviewed for "national security" reasons, no one can enforce the law on these subpoenas. So I think it's naive to imagine that sooner or later Google's database won't be abused, whether or not it's Google doing the abusing.

I don't really care if people consider this "evil" or not. The word is a bit over the top and distracting to the conversation. But there is a real profound privacy issue here, whether or not everyone cares.