As usual with issues of civil liberties, Richard Stallman called it a few years ...

As usual with issues of civil liberties, Richard Stallman called it a few years in advance of TechCrunch: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10054253-92.html

But his stance on this issue goes back further; in 1999, he decided to publish this essay I wrote on the GNU web site, which calls out some dangers of depending on proprietary web services, although not specifically the privacy risks: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kragen-software.html