"I generally like Google, but:"
While your concerns are well voiced there's another side of the coin as well, as I'll try to illustrate.
1) Correct. They did leave however, which is more than we could have said for any other company before them.
2) Correct. They did fess up to it and apologize however, as well as ask for an outside review regarding the handling and deletion of said data. I can't think of another company that would have handled the situation quite so gracefully.
3) Again, correct. The man put his foot in his mouth to be certain and his assumption is absolutely asinine as far as privacy concerns goes. The fact that information posted on the web, be it in user profiles, social networking groups or online searches is retained for quite some time shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. The thing that separates Google from the pack isn't the fact that they're collecting, and retaining, user-posted information however - it's the fact that they openly admit it. Everyone else does as well, they're just not as forthcoming about it.
I'm certainly not trying to portray Google as the savior of mankind though, I'm merely saying that while you're correct that these situations could have been handled better in the grand scheme of things I've yet to see another company do any better under similar situations.
As far as the article is concerned I'd like to point out the same fallacy I did last time.
"It's speculated that carriers pulled out of their agreements to offer the Nexus One because of a common fear that Google is gaining too much power."
That's ludicrous, there's absolutely no incentive for big business to worry about the long-term impact of power players when there's money to be made right here and now.
At the very least such concerns would be an absolute first and if there had been any truth to carriers having a shred of a conscience or soul we wouldn't be bitching about exclusive deals, jailbreaking and exorbitant pricing of voice and data plans.
If carriers are genuinely less than enthusiastic about Android it's probably because the platform is too open, as in not allowing them to safely and easily lock out features they'd like to charge a premium for.