Conflating privacy where privacy is needed with privacy for privacy's sake is a waste of time and dilutes real privacy concerns with a bunch of "Wolf!" cries.
So, google knows about me even when I don't use it. Even when I am explicitly avoiding it, and use DuckDuckGo instead (I do, by the way). Your "benign blog" which uses this service is hurting my privacy big time. I'm okay with you knowing that my computer is visiting your web site. I'm not okay with third parties such as Google, Facebook ("like" buttons, anyone?) or some advertiser automatically knowing that as well.
Same problem with Gmail. They look at and analyse your emails to send you those targeted ads, remember? You pay with your privacy to use it. Which may be fine. But you also pay with my privacy, each time you send me an e-mail, and each time I send one back. That is definitely not fine.
Personally, my heuristic for privacy is this: By default, don't sacrifice your privacy. Think twice before you do. And never ever sacrifice others' privacy without their explicit, informed consent.
We're quite far from that.
I suspect facebook is a close second with the tracking of outbound links from FB and "like" buttons all over...
[1] There are plenty of examples like that floating around. Large companies that were once the kings of their tech field now seem to focus on patents as a source of income.
[2] We kinda had a sneak preview of what a change like that can do when Schmidt handed over the torch.