ping
Dems were/are just as paranoid about "Fox News" and Myspace (which is no longer owned by News Corp.) and for similar reasons.
Google search cookies can (and should) be disabled or deleted/cleaned frequently on regular basis which greatly reduces its tracking capability. General IP "tracking" is not precise, and doesn't really lend itself to the kind of analysis author is worried about. It can also be defeated if one is sufficiently paranoid, but there is hardly and rarely a need for it.
Most people using Gmail use handles instead of real names, and most of that mail is not sensitive or useful for precision voting pattern analysis or "aftermarket" ads.
Google has compiled a lot of "Big Data" type of information that it can mine, so has Facebook (and qualitatively it's much better because it's much more "personal" due to the its nature as "social" media... same is true about Google+ but participation in both is purely voluntary and users should understand that their private data on social media will be monetized, i.e., sold to people/orgs who maybe interested in certain preferences, habits, "traits" or "trends" which includes political analysis), but they don't have "enough" data to be any more usable for electoral victories than what has been collected over the years and is already available to political information analysts (like Barone, Rove, Plouffe, Axelrod et al) and sometimes they are just wrong due to GIGO (think ill-fated Romney's Orca or even much better equivalent from Obama machine).
What author proposes is that the predominant issue is the access or lack of it to the "Big Data." The "Big Data" itself was not the problem in this election, the GOP-e technocrat candidate and the consultant-driven campaigns they keep running since 1990s combined with self-imposed technological disadvantages and lack of coherent and consistent message were the problems.
The temporary disadvantage in "Big Data" can be easily fixed, with some money and effort... The disadvantages in GOP "message" and messengers' passion and sincerity is another matter...
From Gingrich: The challenge confronting Republicans - FR / HE, post #2, 2012 December 24
3. We need a clear distinction between coalition-based campaigns and consultant-based campaigns. There are profound differences in systems, styles, structures, and attitude. The last three big Republican Presidential victories (1980, 1984, 1988) were coalition campaigns. The House victories of 1994, 1996, and 2010 were coalition victories. The Republican consultant class, many campaign professionals, and many Republican staff are deeply opposed to the coalition model. ..... < snip > ..... 5. Infotainment is a world Democrats enjoy and use and Republicans either disdain or fear, and as a consequence avoid. The View, the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, Leno, Letterman, ESPN, Nickelodeon, MTV, and on and on, represent patterns of communications Republicans often disdain, seldom appear on and as a consequence are simply invisible to their audiences. The same could be said for most ethnic media. ..... < snip > ..... 6. The strategic nurturing over time of micro-issues with micro-organizations and micro-communicating ( a pattern much richer and more powerful than micro-targeting) to create micro-communities that support their team and their candidate has been vastly better done by Democrats. This deserves its own study and a strategic response that will require very different systems and structures. ..... < snip > ..... 7. The 47% comment by Governor Romney reflected a deep belief by many conservatives and Republican consultants, campaign professionals, staffs, and activists. The entire psychology of writing off vast parts of a country or state and focusing narrowly may make some sense for a specific campaign. but it is a formula for permanent minority status when adopted by a party. The GOP should end red-versus-blue and narrowly focused targeting models. ..... < snip > ..... 13. Data science Obama-style has no relationship to the Republican model of Internet politics. The Obama system is helped in data science by its 85 to 90% dominance of Silicon Valley. If you have the founders of Google and Facebook helping you design your system you have an enormous advantage over your competitors. The challenge of social networking, micro-community building and citizen mobilization may be second only to the challenge of including minority Americans in the GOP in determining whether Republicans decline into minority status for the next several decades. ..... < snip > ..... 15. In story telling and narrative development, the mismatch of resources is as great as in Internet capabilities. Hollywood, New York City, academics, the news media and trial lawyers are the dominant story tellers in American life. Every one of them is overwhelmingly (80% plus) Democratic. Republicans have complained about the inarticulateness and communications ineffectiveness of the party for the entire time I have been involved (going back to August 1958). This is the third great strategic challenge along with minorities and the Internet community. ..... < snip > ..... 17. The key to success in politics as in war is the ability to stay on offense. There is a deeply destructive tendency among Republicans to fall into a defensive mode (watch the current "fiscal cliff" process as a depressing example). Learning to stay on offense requires a strategic vision that enables you to constantly orient to the future, an operational system that allows you to be inside your opponent's decision cycle ( see Boyd's work on OODA-loops for an explanation) and the tactical skill to dominate the media, which will normally be opposed to you. Republicans as a group have none of these capabilities. ..... < snip > ..... 2. We need a map of the Democrats' coalition and the scale and intensity of their coalition. Their organized efforts and networks simply dwarf anything Republicans and conservatives have developed. Furthermore, their coalition is a permanent system of activism while the Republican consultant model is campaign focused and therefore both episodic and isolated. An ongoing coalition can mass and focus more energy and resources than isolated short time-horizon campaigns.