Seriously though: Is this something the ~2 billion people holding Google accounts need to think about?

Previously we sort of all trusted Google employees to be competent, smart and professional.

Should we still do that with these internal divisions becoming public?

Over the past few years I've taken to a habit to do the more personal searches about things about personal medical issues etc from a separate browser installation (with no Google cookies) using duckduckgo.com or bing.com. I just don't trust Google with new personal secrets any more.