Google Wins. He's Giving Up On Privacy

That's it. They win. He's giving up on privacy. Trying to maintain privacy in contemporary America is just too time consuming, too complicated, too exhausting.

He can't tell the good guys from the bad guys anymore. He doesn't know whom to trust. There are so many relentless assaults coming at all angles — from closed-circuit cameras to GPS trackers to online cookies to spammers, hackers, malware makers, spyware spinners, identity thieves and countless other assailants — he cannot fight them all anymore. They never sleep. They are always evolving, always pushing, always changing privacy settings and terms of service agreements. Privacy fatigue, they call it. Google is not the first company to wear him out; it's just the latest. On March 1, the omnipotent digital empire is rolling out new privacy rules. New default settings will allow Google to cross-reference a logged-in user's activity among its vast and varied Internet presences, which include the elegant Google search engine, the cool YouTube video repository and the impressive inner workings of Android phones.