"...given the latest news surrounding Google's policies on privacy and information security..."

You mean the news about how every other company hit with the US Federal subpoenass buckled without so much as a whimper, while Google is fighting them tooth and nail to protect your privacy?

"For more information take a look at these sites:..."

Oh guess what, if we do a whois search both turn out to be registered to Daniel Brandt -- the same netkook who set up and runs "Google Watch" as a private war on Google after some of his most deeply buried internal pages didn't get the high page ranks he wanted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Watch
He then set up "Wikipedia Watch" as a private war on Wikipedia after it refused to remove a fair and balanced article on his public political activities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Watch
Brandt claims to be a privacy activist, but in reality he attacks those who publish information about HIM (even though he is a public figure who has sought out media coverage) whilst actually violating the privacy of ordinary, powerless folk he doesn't like. He claims to be doing this to protect himself from libel, whilst also spawning site after site of websites -- each pretending to be some osrt of community activist site -- dedicated to slurring his "enemies". In short, he is an unprincipled hypocrite who has a reputation for attacking everyone who disagrees with him.

As for his specific criticisms of Google, there are two important things to remember when listening to those confused by the utterings of Brandt:
1. Web searching on Google works just fine with Google cookies disabled. You need to temporarily turn them back on to login to personalised services (e.g. to use Gmail), but in Firefox this is trivial.
2. It is true that Gmail has a clause which says they may not be able to erase all traces of deleted email from their backups -- but EVERY webmail provider has a similar clause. This is simply because it is not technically feasible to do otherwise! This has nothing to do with Google, it is because "email privacy" is an oxymoron, regardless of which provider you use; if you are going to be seriously troubled if someone ever subpoenas your old email, then DON'T USE EMAIL. This includes Gmail, Hotmail, your ISP and your work place. Even PGP may not be any protection from lawyers, they will subpoena your private key too.

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