While Google automates scanning of your emails in GMail, they don't tell you if that is the case with the other personal and private data they hold about you. Yet your activity across the web is arguably just as personal and private as your emails. That is why anonymising or disassociating your data from your identity is a legitimate concern, as are questions about whether your online activity is anonymous when viewed internally by Google.
Let me put it another way, if I ask you to give me your name, gender, date-of-birth and mobile phone number (as Google does), then proceed to record the searches you undertake as well as sites you visit and videos you watch, would you not expect me to tell you how long I keep that information for? Or whether it's anonymised before internal staff pore through it? Or whether it's aggregated in a way that isn't personally identifiable?