Cynicism is warranted when it comes to Google. The fact that they gave NSA direct access to their systems; the fact that their Street View cars collected personal information through wi-fi networks, etc. means that "Don't be evil" is just a facade.
It's the equivelant of the the Streetview car capturing 'public property', if you want 'privacy', put up a big fence and don't broadcast your SSID.
As for the NSA issue, I'm not going to defend google too much there, but you've seen what happens to providers who didn't comply... I would put that down to more a 'The US govt is pretty hostile to privacy' more than "Google is evil".
On the scale of 'evil shit' happening in the world. Google collecting my Wifi network name ranks about similarly to 'J-Walking'...
As opposed to the multiple vehement denials of that "fact" from Google's executive officers (see David Drummond's interview in The Guardian, for example)
The other problem is your worldview is not falsifiable. Everything Snowden says is true to you and everything Google says is false because Snowden said they would lie about it.
The people who left their wi-fi open didn't do it on purpose, and didn't want Google to access their information.
I'm not contending that using that information wouldn't be a crime, but accidentally collecting it certainly should be held to a different standard.
Can you think of one thing Google could do for you to think that they are not evil?
But they won't. Continued and uninterrupted profits are too important.
You have to understand how US law works. If you are not an injured party, you can't sue the government for it. In other words, Google cannot sue the government for the injury government is causing to you. What they can do, however, is claim an 'injury' on First Amendment grounds, reasoning that their free speech is limited when they cannot disclose that John Doe is being surveilled (and thus John Doe is being injured). They do that with the hope that with transparency John Doe will have the information necessary to sue the government.
