TL;DR: trash-talking Google's record doesn't seem fair to me.

Here are some things that are public knowledge:

1) Google considers some kind of network traffic to be attacks (obviously). Google claims (and no one doubts) that in some cases Google reports these attacks to law enforcement authorities, and to other companies believed to be affected. The main example of this that I'm aware of is Operation Aurora (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora ), the purported 2009 attack, allegedly by Chinese state actors. AIUI, this is the source of the Google/government collaboration mentioned in that Wired article that clobber linked. I think that any reasonable person would agree that this type of data-sharing between victims of crime and the government is not necessarily tantamount to "allying oneself with the surveillance state" (although a reasonable person could point out that once you start cooperating with governments, sometimes it's a slippery slope).

2) Google wants to position itself as a defender of user rights against governments. Maybe this is for-real, maybe this is bullshit; what do we know? We know that Google publishes a transparency report ( google.com/transparencyreport ) , you can read it for yourself. Google claims that they comply with the law, and thus obeys e.g. National Security Letters (including the gag orders that come with most NSLs). If you want to say that obeying legally-constituted surveillance law is necessarily "allying oneself with the surveillance state", well, maybe... but I dispute that this is in-general true.

3) Google also purports to push back the limits of this legal surveillance. For example, in the case of the IRS claiming (until a few days ago) that it can warrantlessly read your email, Google alleges that they refuse to respect such IRS demands, instead requiring a warrant. That is, Google claims to be daring the IRS to take Google to court, since Google thinks the IRS is overreaching their government authority. I cannot prove (or disprove) that Google is in fact doing as they claim, but if so, I see this as a mildly courageous act that protects civil society.

For Google's claims about IRS email surveillance, see e.g. http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/279441-f...

(For full-on heroics, see John Doe vs Ashcroft, revealed to be Nicholas Merrill of Calyx, so mad props to him. Also see http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/03/nsl-found-unconstit... , another piece of brave civil challenge to the same surveillance bullshit).

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So, what's my point here?

Look, we don't know that Google isn't doing sinister shit. Google knows a lot, and has a lot of secrets, so it's appropriate to be wary. (Knowing a lot is key to the huge benefits that Google provides, btw.) But I think we have basically zero evidence of this hypothetical sinister behaviour; all secret-sharing we know about is appropriate and above-board. And we have some meaningful evidence that Google is actively pursuing the public interest by resisting over-sharing (not that I'm claiming this is the #1 corporate goal).

TL;DR: trash-talking Google's record doesn't seem fair to me.

Disclaimer: I work at Google, I have a pro-Google bias, I have no insider knowledge of any of the things discussed in this comment, and if I did have insider knowledge I wouldn't post it on Hacker News.