What's the hoopla about Google over?

Date: Tue Dec 17 2013 Building Web Sites »»»» Internet
There's a growing blowback against Google, for some reason. More and more I'm seeing Google portrayed as the antichrist or something, and that they have some kind of arcane evil intent lurking behind the good-guy image of "do no evil" they portray.

The example in front of me is: It’s becoming a Google World - Eszter Hargittai which refers to Google World

The idea presented is that Google is rolling out an endless stream of new services. They began with search, have added news, discussion groups, shopping, e-mail, maps, talk/chat and who knows what's coming next. As a "convenience", if you stay logged into your google service in a browser session, then Google can offer some additional features.

But at the same time that means Google can track everything you do, watch what you search for, track who you send email to, and (!!gasp!!) they scan your email.

Well, gosh, everything that's said there is also true of, for example, Yahoo. Yahoo has a dizzying array of services, Yahoo offers extended services if you're logged in, etc. And through Yahoo Mail or Yahoo Groups your emails are very scannable by Yahoo's software. Just because Yahoo doesn't do targeted advertising based on your email, doesn't mean they don't scan your email. In order to display your email in your web browser, Yahoo's software absolutely must read your email text and process it into a displayable form. It would be trivial at several steps along the way of Yahoo's processing of your email to also scan its content and do possibly nefarious things with it.

Yet, for some reason Google is singled out for evilhood when Yahoo is not.

Plus, all the same attributes are possessed by Microsoft (MSN), Time/Warner (AOL) and perhaps other services. Microsoft is clearly evil incarnate, but do people spend very much time flaming Microsoft for their potential to track your activities and connections while using MSN?

Why is Google singled out for this treatment?

ANd before someone accuses me of owning Google stock, I do not. However I earn quite a bit in Adsense revenue, thank you very much.