While Google as a company has had complaints about keeping too much private data from users, a proposed new law in Germany forbids the company to offer anonymous email.

"Google is threatening to shut down the German version of its Gmail service if the German Bundestag passes it's new Internet surveillance law."(SlashDot)

Fleischer said the German Justice Ministry wants to make it an obligation not only for internet providers but also for those which offer E-mail services to provide customers data in such a way that users could be identified.(Forbes)

Interesting development, as Google keeps a lot of info for much longer than any government requires at the moment, be it the data is anonymous. They do know how to link people to their data though - they offered to link the user to the kept data after 18 months in the EU.

Source : Der Spiegel