Thank you for the inspiration from your nice and simple real-time API. I made a pass a few years ago on digesting similar GTFS data and you've made me realise how much simpler it could be! :-)
I took "don't BE evil" to mean don't let the company image be that of an evil company which already made me distrust them. Once it was gone I knew the death star was fully operational.
This article triggered flashbacks to 20 years ago and using all sorts of crazy CSS to hack the browser to do what you needed it to. Nowadays CSS is (usually) a remarkable land of sanity in comparison.
It was also a fun time to interview. Can you write a CSS snippet that will make a box red in IE5, Blue in IE6+, and is Yellow in Firefox but black in Netscape? CSS these days is no longer an adventure — they just tend to work.
Possibly the point is that an individual can not be as easily tracked by first identifying the bus, however most cars are registered to their owners. Nowadays most buses and public transport are full of CCTV though so same problem really.