15 ms·

Google in, Google out

142 points by imartin2k 9y ago

MrQuincle 9y ago
> And yet. Like every I/O attendee I received a free Google Home device as part of the I/O experience. (I attended as an engineer, not as press.) But I don’t want one; I’ll be giving mine away. Sorry, Google. It’s not that I mistrust you. It’s just that I don’t want to have to trust any profit-driven megacorporation quite that much. Not Apple, not Amazon, and not even you. It is very interesting to me why certain microphones and cameras are fine, while others are not. Almost everybody carries one of both in their pockets or in their purse. However, it is a no no to embed a cam in a pair of glasses. Building a mic into a speaker is not okay for this guy, but consumer satisfaction is quite high for these devices. I guess to have mics and cams in your car is fine as well. If it's about babies or security (door bells) it is also fine. Augmented stuff on your phone seems a necessary predecessor before Google glass can come out for people like this. It's some kind of anti-sensor attitude that seems to erode over time. I don't think it's about privacy, it seems to be about control. Where's the button on that thing!?
- Mathnerd314 9y ago
  I think it's more of a general Luddite / anti-tech paradigm. Historically, strange things were dangerous and/or poisonous. Tech people probably recognize these devices from science fiction books / movies / stories, so they don't get scared, but the rest of the world has no context to place them in and hence treats them like unexploded ordnance.
  - Loic 9y ago
    By framing this as "luddite/anti-tech" you do not address the fundamental question: Do you really want your life to have such high dependency on a single corporation? I am in no ways anti-tech, but the history has shown that putting your life in the hands of a single corporation is not a sane decision.
    - Mathnerd314 9y ago
      Referring to "the history" is just wrong, there are always conflicting perspectives and facts. See http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in-defense-of-the-company-town.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173396; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173396; there have been plenty of (presumably sane) people who depended on a single corporation. It's not clear whether they're better off for it, and there is a slippery-slope argument, but monopolies and lock-in are not intrinsically evil.
      - cyphar 9y ago
        > It's not clear whether they're better off for it, and there is a slippery-slope argument, but monopolies and lock-in are not intrinsically evil. They are only not intrinsically evil if you make the assumption that they will never harm you (act in a way you didn't bargain for) or disappear. A company which does either has given you no way out of a service you now depend on and are fucked if it doesn't work for you anymore. Given the churn on technology companies, acquisitions and a general lack of ethics, I would not put a lot of trust in claiming that companies are going to uphold either of those requirements. Thus, I would argue that effectively all companies will do evil inevitably and thus are intrinsically evil. Not to mention that companies are psychopaths by structure. They definitely don't care about you (hell, they don't care about their employees on the whole).
        Mathnerd314 9y ago
        > fucked if it doesn't work for you anymore. There are plenty of responses: sue them under antitrust statutes, break in and steal their tech, go the politics route and seize it via eminent domain, etc. It's true though, a lot of those are impractical. But in the end you're pretty much back where you started before you began a relationship with the company; fucked is a relative term, when you should be thinking on an absolute scale of reference. > all companies will do evil inevitably and thus are intrinsically evil I guess it depends on your philosophy of evil. Sure, corporations are like hungry tigers, in that if you're in the same room as them without protection you're likely to get killed and eaten eventually. But does that make tigers (or corporations) evil? Consensus seems to be "no" or "mu": https://www.quora.com/Are-tigers-lions-and-hyenas-evil-creatures-since-they-can-eat-humans https://www.quora.com/Are-tigers-lions-and-hyenas-evil-creat... (mu being defined as in http://webpages.charter.net/sn9/literature/mu.html http://webpages.charter.net/sn9/literature/mu.html)
  - supremesaboteur 9y ago
    There are many problems with Google's dominance. 1. The Filter Bubble. The idea that you can be shut in your own bubble, not being exposed to new ideas or ideas that contradict your own, is pretty bad 2. The idea that a for profit company becoming the arbiter of truth ( with noble intentions of fighting 'fake news' etc ) is also pretty bad. It can be used for political or economic gain 3. The company has a largely hostage users that they can abuse through predatory pricing etc The opposition is not towards technology, but towards one company controlling most, if not all, of modern technology
    - Mathnerd314 9y ago
      > filter bubble That just means you've got to proactively seek out new ideas you're uncomfortable with, and be mindful that not everything can be found on Google. It's not a reason to use a crappy search like Yahoo or Bing (which only indexes 1/10 of the pages Google does: http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/ http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/). > a for profit company becoming the arbiter of truth Wikipedia is more of an arbiter of truth than Google; so far Google has limited itself to indexing information rather than summarizing or categorizing it. > predatory pricing etc Free is predatory? I guess they should be paying users to search, like Bing? http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/get-paid-search-bing-rewards-program/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/get-paid-search-bing-rewards-pr...
      - shakna 9y ago
        > so far Google has limited itself to indexing information rather than summarizing or categorizing it Apart from Google's Instant Answers. Which have, in the past, captured misleading or flat-out wrong information. > predatory pricing etc See Firebase's recent price hike. [0] Not all Google products are free, Google is not just a search engine. Some start off reasonable, you get invested, and then they suddenly become ridiculously more expensive. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14356409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14356409
        joshuamorton 9y ago
        (I work for google, but nothing to do with firebase) How exactly is what I think is best summarized as "we had a bug in our pricing system that was undercharging a miniscule number of users by an order of magnitude, and when we fixed the bug, they were informed of the price increase and we even gave them ways to mitigate, but their app architecture was terrible which made it difficult or impossible, and then after they raised a stink about it we reduced the cost/credited them enough to be mutually agreeable" as predatory?
  - pawadu 9y ago
    Yes, but there are two problems with this particular company: 1. they have grown this mentality where they gather any data they can get their hands on - apologize only when/if caught red handed. (remember google street car password gathering?). 2. the more you use their services the more dependent you become. but google have shown zero care for individual consumers. (who do you call if gmail craps out on you?)
    - Mathnerd314 9y ago
      > data gathering It's not really any worse an invasion of privacy than Snowden or Wikileaks. At least Google apologizes instead of going on about how information should be free. > more dependent Google actively reduces dependence, e.g. by their data takeout option. Obviously there's always going to be some switching cost but it's not like Google is a prison. > Who do you call if gmail craps out Well, if you have a SLA, you just call them on their 99.9% uptime guarantee: https://www.cnet.com/news/can-you-trust-your-business-to-googles-cloud/ https://www.cnet.com/news/can-you-trust-your-business-to-goo... I guess if you're a consumer you don't get the same level of support, but it uses the same infrastructure so any problems will show up on the dashboard: https://www.google.com/appsstatus https://www.google.com/appsstatus The reparations in all cases are limited to service credits, so you'd just be getting more free use of an already free service.
      - zyx321 9y ago
        >It's not really any worse an invasion of privacy than Snowden or Wikileaks So informing people that their government is spying on them is the same as spying on them yourself?
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      >(who do you call if gmail craps out on you?) When was the last time gmail crapped out on you?
      - scholia 9y ago
        The most likely scenario is people getting locked out of Gmail https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=locked+out+of+Gmail https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=locked+out+of+Gmail
- pacala 9y ago
  Always on cameras, always on mics, that's a new low even for Google. Technically they are not yet uploading everything into the cloud, but who in his right mind is trusting Google on privacy anymore? From Google Maps the other day "New! share your location with your friends for an hour". Oh, by the way, give Google Maps permission to always track your location, forever. Wtf. Camera and microphone on the mobile phone activate when I press the button to activate them. Furthermore, the photos and sound are ostensibly owned by me. Pics go to icloud, voice goes to the people I talk to. Not to a corporation that built a global web specifically designed to suck up every bit of personal information that they can possibly suck. "To provide me a better service", haha. Mics and cams are OK in cars, because the car is not connected to the Internet. The data stays in the car. Baby monitors are OK, because they are not connected to the Internet. The data stays in the house. Notice a pattern there?
  - pawadu 9y ago
    > Technically they are not yet uploading everything into the cloud Don't they upload every "Hey, Google!" command to their cloud? I assume they would upload some background sound to train their algorithms against background noise.
    - jankey 9y ago
      Sure, you can review and delete everything here: https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?restrict=vaa&utm_source=help https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?restrict=vaa&utm_so... (I work for Google)
      - pacala 9y ago
        Right. opt-out vs opt-in. http://danariely.com/2008/05/05/3-main-lessons-of-psychology http://danariely.com/2008/05/05/3-main-lessons-of-psychology PS. Kindly explain why Google Maps really wants to stalk my location even when not using it actively. It's been forced down Android users a few years ago via a "Yes/Not now" dark pattern, it's coming on iPhone under the guise of "share location with your friends". PS2. Kindly explain why anyone would ever trust Google to not expand their data acquisition behavior once the sensors are in place. For example, GPS, but always on mics and cameras in the future.
- a_imho 9y ago
  The value proposition is just poor. Not that people love the idea they can be monitored, tracked and recorded anywhere, they just tolerate that, because it is pretty hard to have phone conversation without a mic. Putting an always on telescreen into your home that offers nothing really is a whole different game.
  - JoshMnem 9y ago
    Consumers tolerate it partially because they don't understand technology. They would not tolerate it if they really knew how it worked and had knowledge on how to fix the problem.
    - wordupmaking 9y ago
      And then there's people who do understand but have friends who don't. As everybody should. I can self-host my email all I want, if I communicate with anyone in a corporate silo, the silo records it.
      - JoshMnem 9y ago
        Yes, and there are many dark patterns that companies use to get your data from your contacts, even if you don't use those companies' products.
    - fixermark 9y ago
      I think you over-estimate the public's sensitivity to the risk model. I know plenty of people (myself included) who know how it works and cheerfully embrace it, because the benefits outweigh the risks.
      - JoshMnem 9y ago
        I know many technical people who understand the technology side of things, but they don't fully understand the political and societal implications. That may not be true in your case, and you may have some new arguments that I haven't heard, but I've never found a convincing argument for being careless about privacy, and I've been following and debating the issue fairly closely for about 15 years. It's a very complex and difficult problem. The answer isn't "we absolutely must have 100% privacy" or "they already have all of my data so it doesn't matter." But arguments along the lines of, "I don't mind if they have my data if it helps me find products that I like", tend to arise from "consumer" mentality rather than "architect" mentality. So I would revise my above comment to say, "Consumers tolerate it partially because they don't understand [the full implications]."
- jlg23 9y ago
  > It is very interesting to me why certain microphones and cameras are fine, while others are not. If you film yourself during sex that's one thing. If I film you during sex without your explicit consent that's a completely different thing. > However, it is a no no to embed a cam in a pair of glasses. Building a mic into a speaker is not okay. Building is not the problem, usage is. People don't complain about the new features but about the people who use them without consideration for others' privacy. > I guess to have mics and cams in your car is fine as well. No? Absolutely not. Neither is sending any data about my car to any other party (like manufacturer or insurance). > I don't think it's about privacy, it seems to be about control. Where's the button on that thing!? You are right if with "that thing" you refer to the user who is violating my privacy. Controlling my own devices is easy: The button is my wallet which simply does not open for devices that spy on me.
  - MrQuincle 9y ago
    The deeper question then is the following: Why is it so hard to have people care about privacy enough? If there would be such a strong gradient towards privacy-favoring products and services, why does society so slowly adapt? + It might be that the risks are not yet understood. As argued here: http://laoutaris.info/index.php/2016/09/11/oh-but-people-dont-care-about-privacy/ http://laoutaris.info/index.php/2016/09/11/oh-but-people-don... + It is politically a much stronger move to act upon feelings of fear than on more abstract risk calculations. Advocated here: https://openmedia.org/en/why-it-so-hard-convince-people-care-about-privacy https://openmedia.org/en/why-it-so-hard-convince-people-care... + From our bubble we might think privacy is valuable, but this might just not be shared broadly. Rich people admire privacy: http://www.businessinsider.de/wealthy-people-care-about-privacy-the-most-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.de/wealthy-people-care-about-priv... + People might not want privacy, but something slightly related: they do not want surprises. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/12/people-dont-tru.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/12/people-dont-.... I don't know how many business models are based on privacy, but my assumption is that it's much more likely to succeed with your startup on betting that people will share what you didn't think they would share, then to build a security minded niche product or service.
    - 9y ago
- techdragon 9y ago
  I'm least offended by the door bell type devices. They are on the outside and offer no more information than someone could gain by snooping at my house from the street. The benefits of being able to pretend to be present at home when the doorbell is answered is significantly better security of my personal goods against casual burglary. The downside is someone could remotely harvest a profile and recordings of who enters and leaves my house, which can be viewed from the street and offers me no tangible loss of personal privacy over what someone who wanted to watch me could already do.
  - j_s 9y ago
    Most outdoor security cameras would fall under this classification as well.
- afarrell 9y ago
  > However, it is a no no to embed a cam in a pair of glasses. If someone is holding a phone up and taking a photo of you to post online, you can object. If someone is wearing glasses with the little red indicator light turned off, you can't.
  - mondoshawan 9y ago
    Interestingly enough, if you're wearing a pair of glasses without microphones and a camera but with a display, people still ask the question, "are you recording me?"
huhtenberg 9y ago
Is this guy quoting his own tweets in the article?
- scandox 9y ago
  That is the new normal. I did chuckle at the 3 likes
- boramalper 9y ago
  …and what is wrong with referring to what you have said before?
buro9 9y ago
> They don’t just want to remake the world in their image. They want to remake our individual lives. Each Stack — bar Facebook, for now — offers the same awkward bargain: commit wholly & wholeheartedly to our ecosystem, and we will better your life. And it just might work, if any of the newer Google experiences worked on all Google accounts. My experience as a Google Apps / G Suite user, is that few to none of the newer Google products and features are either available or offer anything more than a basic and perfunctory service. "One account, all of Google", not if the account isn't a Gmail account. It's the biggest thing that is broken at Google, and it's broken in every product department, every team, every feature. It's also why I haven't purchased a Pixel (why? When much of the benefit I'm denied access to, I cannot even ask Google Assistant for my agenda), and I haven't purchased a Home (why? When again it is limited and locked down), and my Android TV seems to lack integration with Photos (which I assume is because of my G Suite account but maybe it's just crappy). Google accounts seem to be driving towards 2 very different and polarised futures, a personal one and a professional one. Having only professional accounts means that all of the personal features are unavailable.
- robotmay 9y ago
  It took me bloody ages to find the toggle that allows Google Now to be used on an Android device tied to a G Suite account. We don't even manage our devices. Turns out it's something to do with enabling support for the activity log or something. That was a fun few hours. I also love how no matter what Google site I'm using, it's signed into the wrong account. It's almost comical.
- m12k 9y ago
  I'm developing a web app that can be installed via the G Suite Marketplace. They also have an 'Integrate with Google' button that we can put on our website so users can just install/grant permissions from there - sounds great - in principle. Except the users don't have any way of choosing which account it uses. So if they happened to log into their personal Gmail account before their work G Suite account, well, then they're just shit out of luck and can't install. I asked about a fix (e.g. a 'select account' box like you get when logging in) on StackOverflow and filed a report on their developer support site - of course, this being Google, there's been no answer more than a month later, and I doubt there ever will be... Anyways, in the meantime, the only thing we can do is pretend that button doesn't exist and instead direct users to the marketplace to install. Except, since our app is only installable by G Suite admins, if you happened to log into your personal Gmail account first, our listing is not even visible... Google's whole account situation is a dumpster fire - and don't even get me started on the APIs they have on G Suite, that seem to have grown organically out of an 'admins would like to script a bit with the data'-use case and only added 3rd party apps as an afterthought. I wonder if the G Suite team is just chronically understaffed and underfunded or if they just don't realize how broken the whole thing is.
paradite 9y ago
On the topic of Google Lens, I don't really understand the hype around it. People are talking about how it is able scan a bar code of SSID and password to connect to router. Isn't that ancient technology? And for other uses like overlay maps info, aren't those just running standard CV/ML algorithms on their mega-servers plus simple integration with other apps in their ecosystem?
- jaflo 9y ago
  I think it is that simple integration that makes or breaks the product. Because Google controls the OS, it allows for a more seamless experience: you wouldn't download an app just to scan and connect to Wi-Fi networks, but because it's a feature built into your phone you are much more likely to use it.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    Anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise. Plenty of visitors download a Barcode Scanner app to log onto my home WiFi because they don't like to punch in a 30-letter code by hand.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    If only they did that. One of the things that annoys me the most about modern smartphones is that every single feature has a separated, isolated app for it (usually each from a different vendor), and none of those apps properly integrate with one another. The more they can integrate at OS level, the better for the user experience (though I'm not having high hopes - Google has a long history of dumbing down applications to the point of making them barely useful for anything).
- floatboth 9y ago
  Yeah it's literally a relaunch of Google Goggles which worked on like… Android 1.x?
- jpalomaki 9y ago
  If they open this to developers, it could be quite powerful and interesting feature. Point your phone to something, Google recognizes what's in the picture and makes this information available on platform. Applications can then be activated based on context and they can additional information to screen. Of course things like this already exist, but my phone does not feel particularly "smart" when I need to be making the choices which app to use on which occasion. They could also tie in app discovery to this. "Hey, you are pointing at movie poster but don't have any related apps, would you like to see a list.." The true power of this of course comes with the augmented reality headsets (Google Glass or whatever it will be in future). Maybe one reason for introducing it already now is to start collecting data. It is certainly interesting for Google to know what kind of things people are pointing their phones at in order to recognize things.
NKCSS 9y ago
There used to be a video called "Google Grid" that talked about a future where everything was Google. It was pretty cool, about 5-10-ish years old I think? But I can't find it anywhere.
- alvarosevilla95 9y ago
  This one by any chance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUHBPuHS-7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUHBPuHS-7s
mwexler 9y ago
It is interesting that of the 5, Microsoft is still in the mix. Look back 10 years, or 20 years, and ask which companies you would have thought would also be present. MS may have made the list, but wouldn't a lot of others as well? Apple is also surprising, but then again, that's what they were so good at. You expect someone to come out of nowhere, but MS just keeps on chugging when so many others failed out.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Microsoft's scale and early dominance gives them incredible staying power. Apple, at this point, too. Huge companies have the money to coast by in mediocrity for years, and can simply buy assets to fill in gaps in their product line. Don't have a chat app? Buy one. Don't have machine learning yet? Buy a couple of those too. Even if a company like Google lost most of it's income overnight, it could coast for years on pure cash reserves. The amount of money these big tech behemoths have to work with is incredible. As long as they strike gold once or twice every several years, they'll be fine.
  - scholia 9y ago
    > Huge companies have the money to coast by in mediocrity for years, and can simply buy assets to fill in gaps in their product line. True, though IBM may now have spent too long coasting by in mediocrity...
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      I don't know, Watson is actually one of the most publicly-recognized names in the AI game. If they leverage that correctly, there's a lot of opportunities there. Especially since most people who want to use AI would view Google as a competitor because of the number of services it operates, and IBM is more likely to support someone's desire for on-premises solutions. (The on-site enterprise solutions Google had for search and Earth, for comparison, have been recently discontinued.)
      - 9y ago
hagakure0c 9y ago
What we need more of is something like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Regulation (EU) 2016/679). Right now, Google, Facebook et al are luring their users deeper and deeper into their ecosystem by promising them a better future, which will never happen, the only thing that is happening are consumers handing over more of their personal data hoping tech will make good on that promise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...
- ghughes 9y ago
  The maximum penalty for violating the GDPR is 4% of worldwide turnover. Possibly stupid question: I keep hearing that this is considered a "high" penalty, but if you're Google or Facebook and this (or any) regulation substantially threatens your bottom line to the tune of more than 4%, wouldn't you just eat it like a tax?
  - Veratyr 9y ago
    The maximum current penalty is 4% of worldwide turnover. I imagine that if it becomes clear that isn't enough to force compliance, legislation can be passed to raise the penalty.
- Sargos 9y ago
  Your premise is flawed. My future is already better than when I started using Google. It promised me a better future and I have already received the benefit and there are many, many more benefits coming in the future. I no longer have to buy and maintain my own hardware for my files. I don't have to worry about losing my precious photos in a fire. I have found better restaurants by allowing my preferences to be known. So they are not just gathering data and providing hope. There are tangible benefits today.
  - hagakure0c 9y ago
    Sure, my concern are all the bad things that will happen when all collected data ends up in the hands of a future totalitarian state. Do you know if there is a kill switch in place ? https://www.wired.com/2017/05/googles-perfect-future-will-always-just-around-corner/ https://www.wired.com/2017/05/googles-perfect-future-will-al...
borabora123 9y ago
Im just leaving the gmail and started to use another search engine. I just wanted google out of my life (including phone) also. I really found google a liar and cheater. My privacy is mine. Now I don't have scare google to delete my accounts anymore.. Google and facebook are sad old players who should be replaced long time ago.
andrenotgiant 9y ago
The thing that scares me the most about all the data I give to Google is not that I am putting lots of trust in present-Google. It's that I am also putting lots of trust in FUTURE-Google. So far, history has shown that even the most dominant tech companies can see their power wane. Imagine you are a VP at Google, and after a year of revenue shrinkage you are being pressured to get "creative" about new sources of revenue... You have everyone's ENTIRE history of data. At one point the "need for revenue" will outweigh the "desire to respect people's privacy."
- Veratyr 9y ago
  That "desire to respect people's privacy" isn't just some form of benevolent corporate altruism though, it's also a legal agreement between Google and its users and something that's closely watched by regulators around the world. It's hard to see because in America there are basically no laws regarding privacy but around Europe in particular, regulators have power and use it. See the "right to be forgotten" laws which were forced on Google as an example. That's not to say that Google can't do things with your data later but it will need your consent and regulators will be paying close attention.
  - andrenotgiant 9y ago
    That's a good point, I have zero understanding of how privacy laws and Google's own TOS limit what they can do with old data. To clarify, though, I'm not talking about Google straight-up selling my data, I'm talking about all the creepy in-between things like: - parsing out the fees I pay from my financial transaction emails and selling me in an "audience" to competing banks. - Parsing my e-commerce Return confirmations and selling it as an "ecommerce credit score" to ecommerce sites. - Monitoring brand mentions on Google Home and selling me in an audience to advertisers. - Selling my contact information to sites I thought I was just browsing "anonymously"
- disconnected 9y ago
  Lots of doomsday scenarios can happen. Consider also that, as dominant companies see their revenue slip, they start cutting corners and get complacent with security. Yahoo is the prime example, I think. It was one of the giants of the early web. Then they started losing relevance, hit rock bottom, started cutting corners and as a result 500+ million users had their account details leaked by hackers. Another doomsday scenario is Google being bought by or merged with a competitor that doesn't give a shit about your privacy or your data. So this entity gobbles up Google's data, sets fire to their privacy agreement (which they will pretend they no longer have to honour because they aren't Google) then pimps you to the highest bidder. Bottom line is, we're screwed.
pascalxus 9y ago
The author seems really concerned with privacy and surveillance. I'm no expert on the subject. But, why all the concern? He said they're working really hard to keep that stuff private. Are there legal risks here? Will the government come after you if you say the wrong thing? I don't really get it. I think the biggest security risk is just your email, if hackers get into that: that's where all the potentially financially devastating information is.

142 points by imartin2k 9y ago

> And yet. Like every I/O attendee I received a free Google Home device as part of the I/O experience. (I attended as an engineer, not as press.) But I don’t want one; I’ll be giving mine away. Sorry, Google. It’s not that I mistrust you. It’s just that I don’t want to have to trust any profit-driven megacorporation quite that much. Not Apple, not Amazon, and not even you. It is very interesting to me why certain microphones and cameras are fine, while others are not. Almost everybody carries one of both in their pockets or in their purse. However, it is a no no to embed a cam in a pair of glasses. Building a mic into a speaker is not okay for this guy, but consumer satisfaction is quite high for these devices. I guess to have mics and cams in your car is fine as well. If it's about babies or security (door bells) it is also fine. Augmented stuff on your phone seems a necessary predecessor before Google glass can come out for people like this. It's some kind of anti-sensor attitude that seems to erode over time. I don't think it's about privacy, it seems to be about control. Where's the button on that thing!?

Mathnerd314 9y ago
I think it's more of a general Luddite / anti-tech paradigm. Historically, strange things were dangerous and/or poisonous. Tech people probably recognize these devices from science fiction books / movies / stories, so they don't get scared, but the rest of the world has no context to place them in and hence treats them like unexploded ordnance.
- Loic 9y ago
  By framing this as "luddite/anti-tech" you do not address the fundamental question: Do you really want your life to have such high dependency on a single corporation? I am in no ways anti-tech, but the history has shown that putting your life in the hands of a single corporation is not a sane decision.
  - Mathnerd314 9y ago
    Referring to "the history" is just wrong, there are always conflicting perspectives and facts. See http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in-defense-of-the-company-town.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173396; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173396; there have been plenty of (presumably sane) people who depended on a single corporation. It's not clear whether they're better off for it, and there is a slippery-slope argument, but monopolies and lock-in are not intrinsically evil.
    - cyphar 9y ago
      > It's not clear whether they're better off for it, and there is a slippery-slope argument, but monopolies and lock-in are not intrinsically evil. They are only not intrinsically evil if you make the assumption that they will never harm you (act in a way you didn't bargain for) or disappear. A company which does either has given you no way out of a service you now depend on and are fucked if it doesn't work for you anymore. Given the churn on technology companies, acquisitions and a general lack of ethics, I would not put a lot of trust in claiming that companies are going to uphold either of those requirements. Thus, I would argue that effectively all companies will do evil inevitably and thus are intrinsically evil. Not to mention that companies are psychopaths by structure. They definitely don't care about you (hell, they don't care about their employees on the whole).
      - Mathnerd314 9y ago
        > fucked if it doesn't work for you anymore. There are plenty of responses: sue them under antitrust statutes, break in and steal their tech, go the politics route and seize it via eminent domain, etc. It's true though, a lot of those are impractical. But in the end you're pretty much back where you started before you began a relationship with the company; fucked is a relative term, when you should be thinking on an absolute scale of reference. > all companies will do evil inevitably and thus are intrinsically evil I guess it depends on your philosophy of evil. Sure, corporations are like hungry tigers, in that if you're in the same room as them without protection you're likely to get killed and eaten eventually. But does that make tigers (or corporations) evil? Consensus seems to be "no" or "mu": https://www.quora.com/Are-tigers-lions-and-hyenas-evil-creatures-since-they-can-eat-humans https://www.quora.com/Are-tigers-lions-and-hyenas-evil-creat... (mu being defined as in http://webpages.charter.net/sn9/literature/mu.html http://webpages.charter.net/sn9/literature/mu.html)
- supremesaboteur 9y ago
  There are many problems with Google's dominance. 1. The Filter Bubble. The idea that you can be shut in your own bubble, not being exposed to new ideas or ideas that contradict your own, is pretty bad 2. The idea that a for profit company becoming the arbiter of truth ( with noble intentions of fighting 'fake news' etc ) is also pretty bad. It can be used for political or economic gain 3. The company has a largely hostage users that they can abuse through predatory pricing etc The opposition is not towards technology, but towards one company controlling most, if not all, of modern technology
  - Mathnerd314 9y ago
    > filter bubble That just means you've got to proactively seek out new ideas you're uncomfortable with, and be mindful that not everything can be found on Google. It's not a reason to use a crappy search like Yahoo or Bing (which only indexes 1/10 of the pages Google does: http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/ http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/). > a for profit company becoming the arbiter of truth Wikipedia is more of an arbiter of truth than Google; so far Google has limited itself to indexing information rather than summarizing or categorizing it. > predatory pricing etc Free is predatory? I guess they should be paying users to search, like Bing? http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/get-paid-search-bing-rewards-program/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/get-paid-search-bing-rewards-pr...
    - shakna 9y ago
      > so far Google has limited itself to indexing information rather than summarizing or categorizing it Apart from Google's Instant Answers. Which have, in the past, captured misleading or flat-out wrong information. > predatory pricing etc See Firebase's recent price hike. [0] Not all Google products are free, Google is not just a search engine. Some start off reasonable, you get invested, and then they suddenly become ridiculously more expensive. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14356409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14356409
      - joshuamorton 9y ago
        (I work for google, but nothing to do with firebase) How exactly is what I think is best summarized as "we had a bug in our pricing system that was undercharging a miniscule number of users by an order of magnitude, and when we fixed the bug, they were informed of the price increase and we even gave them ways to mitigate, but their app architecture was terrible which made it difficult or impossible, and then after they raised a stink about it we reduced the cost/credited them enough to be mutually agreeable" as predatory?
- pawadu 9y ago
  Yes, but there are two problems with this particular company: 1. they have grown this mentality where they gather any data they can get their hands on - apologize only when/if caught red handed. (remember google street car password gathering?). 2. the more you use their services the more dependent you become. but google have shown zero care for individual consumers. (who do you call if gmail craps out on you?)
  - Mathnerd314 9y ago
    > data gathering It's not really any worse an invasion of privacy than Snowden or Wikileaks. At least Google apologizes instead of going on about how information should be free. > more dependent Google actively reduces dependence, e.g. by their data takeout option. Obviously there's always going to be some switching cost but it's not like Google is a prison. > Who do you call if gmail craps out Well, if you have a SLA, you just call them on their 99.9% uptime guarantee: https://www.cnet.com/news/can-you-trust-your-business-to-googles-cloud/ https://www.cnet.com/news/can-you-trust-your-business-to-goo... I guess if you're a consumer you don't get the same level of support, but it uses the same infrastructure so any problems will show up on the dashboard: https://www.google.com/appsstatus https://www.google.com/appsstatus The reparations in all cases are limited to service credits, so you'd just be getting more free use of an already free service.
    - zyx321 9y ago
      >It's not really any worse an invasion of privacy than Snowden or Wikileaks So informing people that their government is spying on them is the same as spying on them yourself?
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    >(who do you call if gmail craps out on you?) When was the last time gmail crapped out on you?
    - scholia 9y ago
      The most likely scenario is people getting locked out of Gmail https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=locked+out+of+Gmail https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=locked+out+of+Gmail
pacala 9y ago
Always on cameras, always on mics, that's a new low even for Google. Technically they are not yet uploading everything into the cloud, but who in his right mind is trusting Google on privacy anymore? From Google Maps the other day "New! share your location with your friends for an hour". Oh, by the way, give Google Maps permission to always track your location, forever. Wtf. Camera and microphone on the mobile phone activate when I press the button to activate them. Furthermore, the photos and sound are ostensibly owned by me. Pics go to icloud, voice goes to the people I talk to. Not to a corporation that built a global web specifically designed to suck up every bit of personal information that they can possibly suck. "To provide me a better service", haha. Mics and cams are OK in cars, because the car is not connected to the Internet. The data stays in the car. Baby monitors are OK, because they are not connected to the Internet. The data stays in the house. Notice a pattern there?
- pawadu 9y ago
  > Technically they are not yet uploading everything into the cloud Don't they upload every "Hey, Google!" command to their cloud? I assume they would upload some background sound to train their algorithms against background noise.
  - jankey 9y ago
    Sure, you can review and delete everything here: https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?restrict=vaa&utm_source=help https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?restrict=vaa&utm_so... (I work for Google)
    - pacala 9y ago
      Right. opt-out vs opt-in. http://danariely.com/2008/05/05/3-main-lessons-of-psychology http://danariely.com/2008/05/05/3-main-lessons-of-psychology PS. Kindly explain why Google Maps really wants to stalk my location even when not using it actively. It's been forced down Android users a few years ago via a "Yes/Not now" dark pattern, it's coming on iPhone under the guise of "share location with your friends". PS2. Kindly explain why anyone would ever trust Google to not expand their data acquisition behavior once the sensors are in place. For example, GPS, but always on mics and cameras in the future.
a_imho 9y ago
The value proposition is just poor. Not that people love the idea they can be monitored, tracked and recorded anywhere, they just tolerate that, because it is pretty hard to have phone conversation without a mic. Putting an always on telescreen into your home that offers nothing really is a whole different game.
- JoshMnem 9y ago
  Consumers tolerate it partially because they don't understand technology. They would not tolerate it if they really knew how it worked and had knowledge on how to fix the problem.
  - wordupmaking 9y ago
    And then there's people who do understand but have friends who don't. As everybody should. I can self-host my email all I want, if I communicate with anyone in a corporate silo, the silo records it.
    - JoshMnem 9y ago
      Yes, and there are many dark patterns that companies use to get your data from your contacts, even if you don't use those companies' products.
  - fixermark 9y ago
    I think you over-estimate the public's sensitivity to the risk model. I know plenty of people (myself included) who know how it works and cheerfully embrace it, because the benefits outweigh the risks.
    - JoshMnem 9y ago
      I know many technical people who understand the technology side of things, but they don't fully understand the political and societal implications. That may not be true in your case, and you may have some new arguments that I haven't heard, but I've never found a convincing argument for being careless about privacy, and I've been following and debating the issue fairly closely for about 15 years. It's a very complex and difficult problem. The answer isn't "we absolutely must have 100% privacy" or "they already have all of my data so it doesn't matter." But arguments along the lines of, "I don't mind if they have my data if it helps me find products that I like", tend to arise from "consumer" mentality rather than "architect" mentality. So I would revise my above comment to say, "Consumers tolerate it partially because they don't understand [the full implications]."
jlg23 9y ago
> It is very interesting to me why certain microphones and cameras are fine, while others are not. If you film yourself during sex that's one thing. If I film you during sex without your explicit consent that's a completely different thing. > However, it is a no no to embed a cam in a pair of glasses. Building a mic into a speaker is not okay. Building is not the problem, usage is. People don't complain about the new features but about the people who use them without consideration for others' privacy. > I guess to have mics and cams in your car is fine as well. No? Absolutely not. Neither is sending any data about my car to any other party (like manufacturer or insurance). > I don't think it's about privacy, it seems to be about control. Where's the button on that thing!? You are right if with "that thing" you refer to the user who is violating my privacy. Controlling my own devices is easy: The button is my wallet which simply does not open for devices that spy on me.
- MrQuincle 9y ago
  The deeper question then is the following: Why is it so hard to have people care about privacy enough? If there would be such a strong gradient towards privacy-favoring products and services, why does society so slowly adapt? + It might be that the risks are not yet understood. As argued here: http://laoutaris.info/index.php/2016/09/11/oh-but-people-dont-care-about-privacy/ http://laoutaris.info/index.php/2016/09/11/oh-but-people-don... + It is politically a much stronger move to act upon feelings of fear than on more abstract risk calculations. Advocated here: https://openmedia.org/en/why-it-so-hard-convince-people-care-about-privacy https://openmedia.org/en/why-it-so-hard-convince-people-care... + From our bubble we might think privacy is valuable, but this might just not be shared broadly. Rich people admire privacy: http://www.businessinsider.de/wealthy-people-care-about-privacy-the-most-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.de/wealthy-people-care-about-priv... + People might not want privacy, but something slightly related: they do not want surprises. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/12/people-dont-tru.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/12/people-dont-.... I don't know how many business models are based on privacy, but my assumption is that it's much more likely to succeed with your startup on betting that people will share what you didn't think they would share, then to build a security minded niche product or service.
  - 9y ago
techdragon 9y ago
I'm least offended by the door bell type devices. They are on the outside and offer no more information than someone could gain by snooping at my house from the street. The benefits of being able to pretend to be present at home when the doorbell is answered is significantly better security of my personal goods against casual burglary. The downside is someone could remotely harvest a profile and recordings of who enters and leaves my house, which can be viewed from the street and offers me no tangible loss of personal privacy over what someone who wanted to watch me could already do.
- j_s 9y ago
  Most outdoor security cameras would fall under this classification as well.
afarrell 9y ago
> However, it is a no no to embed a cam in a pair of glasses. If someone is holding a phone up and taking a photo of you to post online, you can object. If someone is wearing glasses with the little red indicator light turned off, you can't.
- mondoshawan 9y ago
  Interestingly enough, if you're wearing a pair of glasses without microphones and a camera but with a display, people still ask the question, "are you recording me?"

huhtenberg 9y ago

Is this guy quoting his own tweets in the article?

scandox 9y ago
That is the new normal. I did chuckle at the 3 likes
boramalper 9y ago
…and what is wrong with referring to what you have said before?

buro9 9y ago

> They don’t just want to remake the world in their image. They want to remake our individual lives. Each Stack — bar Facebook, for now — offers the same awkward bargain: commit wholly & wholeheartedly to our ecosystem, and we will better your life. And it just might work, if any of the newer Google experiences worked on all Google accounts. My experience as a Google Apps / G Suite user, is that few to none of the newer Google products and features are either available or offer anything more than a basic and perfunctory service. "One account, all of Google", not if the account isn't a Gmail account. It's the biggest thing that is broken at Google, and it's broken in every product department, every team, every feature. It's also why I haven't purchased a Pixel (why? When much of the benefit I'm denied access to, I cannot even ask Google Assistant for my agenda), and I haven't purchased a Home (why? When again it is limited and locked down), and my Android TV seems to lack integration with Photos (which I assume is because of my G Suite account but maybe it's just crappy). Google accounts seem to be driving towards 2 very different and polarised futures, a personal one and a professional one. Having only professional accounts means that all of the personal features are unavailable.

robotmay 9y ago
It took me bloody ages to find the toggle that allows Google Now to be used on an Android device tied to a G Suite account. We don't even manage our devices. Turns out it's something to do with enabling support for the activity log or something. That was a fun few hours. I also love how no matter what Google site I'm using, it's signed into the wrong account. It's almost comical.
m12k 9y ago
I'm developing a web app that can be installed via the G Suite Marketplace. They also have an 'Integrate with Google' button that we can put on our website so users can just install/grant permissions from there - sounds great - in principle. Except the users don't have any way of choosing which account it uses. So if they happened to log into their personal Gmail account before their work G Suite account, well, then they're just shit out of luck and can't install. I asked about a fix (e.g. a 'select account' box like you get when logging in) on StackOverflow and filed a report on their developer support site - of course, this being Google, there's been no answer more than a month later, and I doubt there ever will be... Anyways, in the meantime, the only thing we can do is pretend that button doesn't exist and instead direct users to the marketplace to install. Except, since our app is only installable by G Suite admins, if you happened to log into your personal Gmail account first, our listing is not even visible... Google's whole account situation is a dumpster fire - and don't even get me started on the APIs they have on G Suite, that seem to have grown organically out of an 'admins would like to script a bit with the data'-use case and only added 3rd party apps as an afterthought. I wonder if the G Suite team is just chronically understaffed and underfunded or if they just don't realize how broken the whole thing is.

paradite 9y ago

On the topic of Google Lens, I don't really understand the hype around it. People are talking about how it is able scan a bar code of SSID and password to connect to router. Isn't that ancient technology? And for other uses like overlay maps info, aren't those just running standard CV/ML algorithms on their mega-servers plus simple integration with other apps in their ecosystem?

jaflo 9y ago
I think it is that simple integration that makes or breaks the product. Because Google controls the OS, it allows for a more seamless experience: you wouldn't download an app just to scan and connect to Wi-Fi networks, but because it's a feature built into your phone you are much more likely to use it.
- majewsky 9y ago
  Anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise. Plenty of visitors download a Barcode Scanner app to log onto my home WiFi because they don't like to punch in a 30-letter code by hand.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  If only they did that. One of the things that annoys me the most about modern smartphones is that every single feature has a separated, isolated app for it (usually each from a different vendor), and none of those apps properly integrate with one another. The more they can integrate at OS level, the better for the user experience (though I'm not having high hopes - Google has a long history of dumbing down applications to the point of making them barely useful for anything).
floatboth 9y ago
Yeah it's literally a relaunch of Google Goggles which worked on like… Android 1.x?
jpalomaki 9y ago
If they open this to developers, it could be quite powerful and interesting feature. Point your phone to something, Google recognizes what's in the picture and makes this information available on platform. Applications can then be activated based on context and they can additional information to screen. Of course things like this already exist, but my phone does not feel particularly "smart" when I need to be making the choices which app to use on which occasion. They could also tie in app discovery to this. "Hey, you are pointing at movie poster but don't have any related apps, would you like to see a list.." The true power of this of course comes with the augmented reality headsets (Google Glass or whatever it will be in future). Maybe one reason for introducing it already now is to start collecting data. It is certainly interesting for Google to know what kind of things people are pointing their phones at in order to recognize things.

NKCSS 9y ago

There used to be a video called "Google Grid" that talked about a future where everything was Google. It was pretty cool, about 5-10-ish years old I think? But I can't find it anywhere.

alvarosevilla95 9y ago
This one by any chance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUHBPuHS-7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUHBPuHS-7s

mwexler 9y ago

It is interesting that of the 5, Microsoft is still in the mix. Look back 10 years, or 20 years, and ask which companies you would have thought would also be present. MS may have made the list, but wouldn't a lot of others as well? Apple is also surprising, but then again, that's what they were so good at. You expect someone to come out of nowhere, but MS just keeps on chugging when so many others failed out.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
Microsoft's scale and early dominance gives them incredible staying power. Apple, at this point, too. Huge companies have the money to coast by in mediocrity for years, and can simply buy assets to fill in gaps in their product line. Don't have a chat app? Buy one. Don't have machine learning yet? Buy a couple of those too. Even if a company like Google lost most of it's income overnight, it could coast for years on pure cash reserves. The amount of money these big tech behemoths have to work with is incredible. As long as they strike gold once or twice every several years, they'll be fine.
- scholia 9y ago
  > Huge companies have the money to coast by in mediocrity for years, and can simply buy assets to fill in gaps in their product line. True, though IBM may now have spent too long coasting by in mediocrity...
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    I don't know, Watson is actually one of the most publicly-recognized names in the AI game. If they leverage that correctly, there's a lot of opportunities there. Especially since most people who want to use AI would view Google as a competitor because of the number of services it operates, and IBM is more likely to support someone's desire for on-premises solutions. (The on-site enterprise solutions Google had for search and Earth, for comparison, have been recently discontinued.)
    - 9y ago

hagakure0c 9y ago

What we need more of is something like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Regulation (EU) 2016/679). Right now, Google, Facebook et al are luring their users deeper and deeper into their ecosystem by promising them a better future, which will never happen, the only thing that is happening are consumers handing over more of their personal data hoping tech will make good on that promise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...

ghughes 9y ago
The maximum penalty for violating the GDPR is 4% of worldwide turnover. Possibly stupid question: I keep hearing that this is considered a "high" penalty, but if you're Google or Facebook and this (or any) regulation substantially threatens your bottom line to the tune of more than 4%, wouldn't you just eat it like a tax?
- Veratyr 9y ago
  The maximum current penalty is 4% of worldwide turnover. I imagine that if it becomes clear that isn't enough to force compliance, legislation can be passed to raise the penalty.
Sargos 9y ago
Your premise is flawed. My future is already better than when I started using Google. It promised me a better future and I have already received the benefit and there are many, many more benefits coming in the future. I no longer have to buy and maintain my own hardware for my files. I don't have to worry about losing my precious photos in a fire. I have found better restaurants by allowing my preferences to be known. So they are not just gathering data and providing hope. There are tangible benefits today.
- hagakure0c 9y ago
  Sure, my concern are all the bad things that will happen when all collected data ends up in the hands of a future totalitarian state. Do you know if there is a kill switch in place ? https://www.wired.com/2017/05/googles-perfect-future-will-always-just-around-corner/ https://www.wired.com/2017/05/googles-perfect-future-will-al...

borabora123 9y ago

Im just leaving the gmail and started to use another search engine. I just wanted google out of my life (including phone) also. I really found google a liar and cheater. My privacy is mine. Now I don't have scare google to delete my accounts anymore.. Google and facebook are sad old players who should be replaced long time ago.

andrenotgiant 9y ago

The thing that scares me the most about all the data I give to Google is not that I am putting lots of trust in present-Google. It's that I am also putting lots of trust in FUTURE-Google. So far, history has shown that even the most dominant tech companies can see their power wane. Imagine you are a VP at Google, and after a year of revenue shrinkage you are being pressured to get "creative" about new sources of revenue... You have everyone's ENTIRE history of data. At one point the "need for revenue" will outweigh the "desire to respect people's privacy."

Veratyr 9y ago
That "desire to respect people's privacy" isn't just some form of benevolent corporate altruism though, it's also a legal agreement between Google and its users and something that's closely watched by regulators around the world. It's hard to see because in America there are basically no laws regarding privacy but around Europe in particular, regulators have power and use it. See the "right to be forgotten" laws which were forced on Google as an example. That's not to say that Google can't do things with your data later but it will need your consent and regulators will be paying close attention.
- andrenotgiant 9y ago
  That's a good point, I have zero understanding of how privacy laws and Google's own TOS limit what they can do with old data. To clarify, though, I'm not talking about Google straight-up selling my data, I'm talking about all the creepy in-between things like: - parsing out the fees I pay from my financial transaction emails and selling me in an "audience" to competing banks. - Parsing my e-commerce Return confirmations and selling it as an "ecommerce credit score" to ecommerce sites. - Monitoring brand mentions on Google Home and selling me in an audience to advertisers. - Selling my contact information to sites I thought I was just browsing "anonymously"
disconnected 9y ago
Lots of doomsday scenarios can happen. Consider also that, as dominant companies see their revenue slip, they start cutting corners and get complacent with security. Yahoo is the prime example, I think. It was one of the giants of the early web. Then they started losing relevance, hit rock bottom, started cutting corners and as a result 500+ million users had their account details leaked by hackers. Another doomsday scenario is Google being bought by or merged with a competitor that doesn't give a shit about your privacy or your data. So this entity gobbles up Google's data, sets fire to their privacy agreement (which they will pretend they no longer have to honour because they aren't Google) then pimps you to the highest bidder. Bottom line is, we're screwed.

pascalxus 9y ago

The author seems really concerned with privacy and surveillance. I'm no expert on the subject. But, why all the concern? He said they're working really hard to keep that stuff private. Are there legal risks here? Will the government come after you if you say the wrong thing? I don't really get it. I think the biggest security risk is just your email, if hackers get into that: that's where all the potentially financially devastating information is.