associate a fresh newly installed system / browser / ip
with a trace of crumbs you usually leave on the network
Again, I totally agree this is possible, but I haven't seen any evidence that they're doing it. If they were doing this they'd be using it for something, but it's not visible in any of the public products. For example, the company in the article you linked to, Drawbridge, talks about cross-device tracking as something they could sell to advertisers.
Everyone is doing it, Google, FB, Amazon all have acres
of server farms grinding such data.
"Everyone is doing it" is very different from "everyone is in a position to do it". If you have some evidence that a big reputable company, like the three you mention here, actually is "identifying you even when you are not logged in and browse in private mode with no cookies" I would love to see it.
Google even offers free DNS servers just to
collect more of it.
The privacy policy for Google's DNS [1] says "Google Public DNS does not permanently store personally identifiable information." Do you think they're not following the policy?
Amazon will give you different price depending on who
it 'thinks' you are.
Really? Some looking turns up Bezos saying "We've never tested and we never will test prices based on customer demographics." [2] (Even then, dynamic pricing is way less invasive than trying to connect User-A to User-A-In-Incognito-Mode.)
[1] https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy [2] http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=119399