Google has changed its homepage, which you may have seen already from various Save as Draftwebsites reporting. Now Google is providing a link to its “Privacy Center” on the homepage, ending one of the big privacy and beauty dramas, we were playing for a while!.
I hope this will chill some people now!
Official Google Blog: What comes next in this series? 13, 33, 53, 61, 37, 28...
Ask.com is betting that privacy concerns will sell their wares.. The fourth-largest search engine company will introduce a new and novel service today called AskEraser, which allows users to make their searches more private, once the AskEraser is turned on. Best part of Askeraser is the easy way that one could use it. People will be able to turn AskEraser on or off with two clicks.
NY Times Bits says that it is not much that Ask erases. Even if ask erases, there are more who hordes user data. It is like swimming among thousands of sharks, and one of them being a vegetarian. So exercise care, where you roam. How you ask, well I am yet to find.Ask.com and other major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft typically keep track of search terms typed by users and link them to a computer’s Internet address, and sometimes to the user. However, Google and Microsoft make search logs largely anonymous or discard them after 18 months. Yahoo does the same after 13 months.
First to those who going to cry foul about privacy and Google taking over our lives, please read the excerpt from wikipedia below! 
I came across this info in gmail blog,
Official Gmail Blog: Manage multiple accounts with Mail Fetcher
and even though I have been using it, never thought of it as a big thing! But now I see it. If you have Gmail account and you are halfway there. If you have already not noticed, there is mail fetcher, that lets you retrieve messages from up to five different email accounts. Besides taking advantage of Gmail’s spam filtering, you can also use Gmail to send messages using your other email addresses. This is convenient for users juggling multiple accounts -- log in once from anywhere and access all of your messages from different email accounts (without missing a single Gmail chat). To enable Mail Fetcher, simply click "Settings," select the "Accounts" tab, click "Add another mail account" and specify your settings.
Now for those privacy concerns!
Because e-mail connects through many routers and mail servers on its way to the recipient, it is inherently vulnerable to both physical and virtual eavesdropping. Current industry standards do not place emphasis on security; information is transferred in plain text, and mail servers regularly conduct unprotected backups of e-mail that passes through. In effect, every e-mail leaves a digital papertrail in its wake that can be easily inspected months or years later.
The e-mail can be read by any cracker who gains access to an inadequately protected router. Some security professionals argue that e-mail traffic is protected from such "casual" attack by security through obscurity - arguing that the vast numbers of e-mails make it difficult for an individual cracker to find, much less to exploit, any particular e-mail. Others argue that with the increasing power of personal computers and the increasing sophistication and availability of data-mining software, such protections are at best temporary.
Intelligence agencies, using intelligent software, can screen the contents of e-mail with relative ease. Although these methods have been decried by civil rights activists as an invasion of privacy, agencies such as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation conduct screening operations regularly within the bounds of the law.
Happy emailing!
