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It's all about marketing & advertising. If they know what you've been buying and where you've been going they can tailor ads specifically targeted for you. Like someone else mentioned, the NSA gets all of this information too, Google has been all too willing to provide it when the gubmint comes a knockin. In turn, they let Google get away with legally questionable stuff.

George Orwell wrote all about it, but he was off by about 30 years.

Right about Orwell. Huxley's Brave New World was prescient, too, with it's predictions of the populace entertaining itself to death and popping pills to feel better.

And it all fits into Sir John Glubb's narrative.

The funny thing is, it'll be the poorer countries that will weather the coming storm best of all.