This is the core question of the Information Age. Companies like Google are in position to gather a boat ton of information about you if you're not actively avoiding them. With this information, they can provide "futuristic" services like a global search engine that knows your search preferences and provides contextual advertisements, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine a world where, upon arriving at your travel destination, your Android phone indicates the places near your hotel you'll want to eat or drink at. Or, during a month where you've got a lot of Work meetings scheduled, Google Calendar suggests that you and your friends seem to all be free this Friday evening and you could catch the film you've all been posting about. That sounds pretty cool.
But there's a very thin line between "helpful" and "annoying", especially if there's no easy way to opt-out. And there's no way to know if Google is providing your data to governments or large corporations. Who all knows about me, and how much do they know?
The future won't be boring - provided that all these helpful algorithmic suggestions don't completely destroy the serendipity that often adds an immense amount of completely unexpected value in the physical world. But I'm sure there's an algorithm for that too.
But there's a very thin line between "helpful" and "annoying", especially if there's no easy way to opt-out. And there's no way to know if Google is providing your data to governments or large corporations. Who all knows about me, and how much do they know?
At least the future won't be boring.