Privacy concerns and their effects

A non-techie friend of mine was talking among some of her other non-techie friends, and the topic of searching came up. One said "I heard that Google keeps track of the searches you do, so I never use them; I use Yahoo instead". My friend was able to arch an eyebrow at that, which makes me feel better about the tech clue I have been giving her. The bigger point, of course, is that the negative publicity that Google has gotten over privacy has not made Internet users safer, and may have made some of them less so.