3. Google Safari: not just hunting WiFi. Google’s court record includes more than just grabbing and snatching data. In early 2012, the Wall Street Journal broke the story that its software was bypassing security settings for Apple devices using the Safari browser. “Google hated this [Safari’s anti-tracking features] and used a secret code to bypass this security setting,” the blog GoogleExposed  wrote. “This exposed millions of Safari users to tracking for months without them even knowing about it.” In August 2012, the Federal Trade Commission  fined Google $22.5 million, its largest civil fine, noting that Google also had violated previous privacy agreements.

4. Android: another data gateway. One year after the FTC fine,  ComputerWorld.com’s Michael Horowitz, who writes its Defensive Computing feature, noted Google was back to its old tricks. “Google knows nearly every WiFi password in the world,” he declared, explaining that was the result of backdoor access to hundreds of millions of phones and devices using its Android operating system.

“Sounds great. Backing up your data/settings makes moving to a new Android device much easier,” Horowitz wrote, citing how the company sold this feature to consumers. “It lets Google configure your new Android device very much like your old one. What is not said, is that Google can read the WiFi passwords.” The good news, he said, is that this feature can be turned off. “The bad news is that, like any American company, Google can be compelled by agencies of the U.S. government to silently spill the beans.”

ComputerWorld was  careful not to pick just on Google for domestic spying. DropBox, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, FaceBook, Skype—and others—all do pretty much the same thing: read user data and grant government access to it. But Google’s mission, detailed in its patents, stands apart. Its business is based on analyzing user metrics with  ever-growing precision, and selling those insights to advertisers.

Thus, the recent  handwringing by Google CEO Eric Schmidt that Google—and others—was taken advantage of by America’s top spymasters following Edward Snowden’s still-unfolding National Security Agency whistleblowing, is more than hollow. It’s a farce. The record shows that Google knows exactly what it is doing.

2014 is likely to be a year where the trade-off for more profits and data for Google will be the loss of privacy. It’s not paranoid to say that Google’s acquisition of Nest is at the cutting edge of colonizing the links between our electronic devices and our lives. The trend of aggregating all the data that’s out there is behind many privacy-invading social media products, such as an app launching  this week that literally allows a man to walk into a bar, see a woman and know her name “before he even says hello.”

Later this summer, Google will start selling its voice- and video-capturing Glass eyewear. Google Glass may be fantastic as a hands-liberating computing platform, but it also enables its users to film, analyze or spy upon others from afar. But it’s up to us to say where the red lines should be drawn when it comes to protecting privacy and personal rights, and balacing those aganist overly intrusive individuals, corporations, institutions and governments.