Sniff browser history for improved user experience - Niall turns what was first revealed as sort of a web browser privacy problem, into a pretty neat feature. Depending on your perspective, this is either very elegant or very inelegant 
Ask.com Unveils Search Privacy Tool: Users Control Their Search Data - Ask.com has been making smart moves, for the most part. Being in fourth place, the onus is on them to differentiate themselves and take risks.
Privacy specifically, I think has, just in the last few months, finally hit mainstream consciousness. More and more “normal” are telling me about their online privacy fears.
In a related vein, Facebook really screwed up, and I’m not sure they’re done screwing up. I praised them a lot in some recent blog posts… it never occurred to me that they could have possibly not learned any lessons from when they released newsfeeds and minifeeds.
Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy: The Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock and Roll — New York Magazine - a much-needed article, although I’m still reading it. One the one side, privacy is now in crisis mode, with everything publicly available; on the other hand, the younger generation is paradigm shifting, and embrases the privacylessness wholeheartedly.
If a tree falls, and it is doesn’t have a permalink, did it really happen? How would we know if it did, there’s not even a video of it…