I'm not the only one concerned about Google's policy of storing everything you and I do on their servers--forever. This New Zealand article [link no longer available] also expresses concerns about the way Google keeps tabs on everything we do.
Google hides behind the polite fiction that keeping everything is a "service" they perform for us, but we don't get access to the data. The "service" they perform is to mine our searches, our email, and the newsgroups we browse and use them to sell advertising space.
One might argue that in fact, Google's ads pay for all the free services Google provides. Fair enough, and as a business, Google does provide useful tools and is making money with the strategy. The rub comes in when you look at how long Google retains personal data--forever. That repository, subject to government subpoenas, becomes a convenient way for the government and others to snoop in our affairs long after the fact.
Twenty years out of college, involved in a civil lawsuit, would you want the opposing side to enter into evidence all the Web sites and searches you performed in college, where the opposing side uses the data to establish that you have certain character faults, as evidenced by what you looked at twenty years ago.
The data itself may be innocuous, but it can and will be used in ways that will damage people's reputations and may cause harm. To protect yourself, it's a good idea to open up the cookies window in your browser every two or three months and delete most if not all of the cookies--especially the Google cookies and any URL with 'ad' in the domain name.