"We don't know enough about you, " Schmidt said.

"That is the most important aspect of Google's expansion."

This prompted a predictable storm of suspicion on both sides of the Atlantic.

But don't worry, you can trust Google. Just ask them.

Google was almost certainly aware that its push to collect more information about us was bound to meet with a reaction, so it's been making some effort to get out in front of potential critics.

In its Barrow St headquarters in Dublin two weeks ago, Google's privacy point man Peter Fleischer met with selected reporters to talk through the company's approach to privacy. The day before, Fleischer said, he'd done a question-and-answer session on the relevant issues with Ireland's data protection commissioner, Billy Hawkes, in front of assembled Google employees.

Far from being a threat to privacy, Fleischer argued, Google was in fact its greatest defender against inappropriate government intrusion.

Google resisted a subpoena from the US government that sought massive amount of data from individual searches and won its case. Since 9/11 governments have become increasingly demanding that companies be willing to hand over information about internet users.

Germany is proposing a law requiring that the identities of email accounts holders be confirmed. Sweden is proposing that it be able to monitor all internet communications.

"This is a critical moment for privacy principles, " Fleischer said. "In the 1990s it seemed like privacy rights got stronger each year. Since 9/11, in this decade, these things have gone in reverse."

"People trust us. They have to trust the system."

Fleischer said that if Germany persists, "we're sure we will not comply with this law, " even if it meant shutting down its Gmail service in Germany. He said Google was threatening to remove its servers from Sweden rather than agree to government demands there.

Yet the positioning of Google as a defender of privacy rather than its greatest potential violator - or as a service that could become a surveillance tool pressed into government service with a reach undreamt of this side of George Orwell - will prove difficult. That the lofty ambition of organising all the information in the world, in order to be profitable, may include the information between your ears, cannot fail to alarm anyone with a pulse.

Amid all the frothy scaremongering, however, it might behove some observers to realise that the aspiration to be all-knowing and all-wise is not the same as actually being all-knowing and all-wise. Google is not God, or even Big Brother. It's a company powered by a simple idea, which nonetheless hasn't managed to crack context-sensitive placement of radio ads in trials in the US. It is also trying to branch out from relatively simple business, its AdSense adverts that relate to text, to more complicated ad placements with audio, images and video.

When Google unveils its own currency and standing army, worry. Until then, try to remember it's a company.