5 ms·

If FB goes down for one day it is a minor inconvenience. If Google goes down for one day, I am literally at a standstill. No Maps, no Search, no GMail, no YouT

If FB goes down for one day it is a minor inconvenience. If Google goes down for one day, I am literally at a standstill. No Maps, no Search, no GMail, no YouTube, no Photos! I don't know how I will get through the day without these services :( As such, with Google, I am more than ok them using my data to target me ads since it does feel a mutually beneficial relationship.

lucb1e 9y ago
> As such, with Google, I am more than ok them using my data Woah, that was a very different conclusion than I was expecting. The post builds up to how terribly dependent you are, but concludes with "so I'm very happy". I see your reasoning and your point, but don't forget what kind of relation this is (where you pay very little to nothing for most services, money-wise...).
- product50 9y ago
  I am happy to pay them money or pay with data. Choose your thing. We can't just keep on operating in a world where everything is free and we don't want targeted ads. And I never used "I'm so very happy". This is where biases come in. My goal was to say that Google services are very useful (to me) and I am ok if in return I have to give them my data.
  - draggnar 9y ago
    I'm very happy to pay them, just like a utility.
    - product50 9y ago
      That makes sense. I will do it as well if advertising wasn't a model. In some ways, YouTube already allows that with Red. I wonder how many people are like you though outside the tech forums and especially in developing countries (where a lot of the users for US based tech companies come from).
    - droidist2 9y ago
      I don't feel like many people would though, even if it was a one-time $0.99 purchase.
      - product50 9y ago
        One time $0.99 won't justify this. Companies can make far more money per user from ads. It has to be a subscription model for it to be tenable.
        Erlangolem 9y ago
        I believe FB makes something like $6.50 per user. Obviously Google makes money from users too, and given overlap it seems likely that one user is worth quite a bit annually. Average that out over lifetime value, and we’re talking thousands of dollars. Imagine if the likes of Equifax treated silos of data as a liability instead of an asset to be milked. Properly valued, a breach of hundreds of millions of people’s data would end a business, even as large as Equifax.
        aylmao 9y ago
        This is interesting actually. In theory it makes sense for them to offer a subscription that gets rid of ads, and if priced well it could make them more money on a user than ads. I'm sure a few people would be pay $5.99 - $9.99 for ad-free Facebook, especially if this means getting rid of video ads too. Yet, if too many people opt for the paid option, technically advertiser value would fall, since less users would be targetable. Moreover, $6.50 average per user means they probably make close to no money on some users, but a lot of money on others. If only their high-yielding users opt-in to an ad-less Facebook, this could mean big losses for them. I guess this is why they haven't offered a paid version as an option ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
        lucb1e 9y ago
        > I'm sure a few people would be pay $5.99 - $9.99 for ad-free Facebook It's not about the ads, it's about the tracking, profiling, and sharing/selling our data. If I could pay a few dollars a month (I guess Facebook would be worth $3-5/mo to me, and Google $5-10/mo) and get out of the whole tracking/voter-manipulation/profiling/sharing data/etc. thing, that'd be worth it. That would have to include that any non-essential data is not recorded or (if I previously was on the free tier and am now paying for a year or so) permanently deleted. Of course many personal things fall in the 'necessary for functionality' category, like chat history and which pages I liked, but part of the deal is not using that data for anything other than the service itself. And if I decide to go to a competitor, I don't want to be blackmailed into paying to keep it private, so I'd want to have an option to permanently take out and delete my data once I leave. Sounds like a tough bargain, given all the restrictions I'm putting on it, but the alternative is the current state where I'm not making them any money at all. Not using it is worth it to me, despite missing out on a few things. And I don't think the requirements are unfair, I'm just asking them to provide service X for price Y without anything else, but apparently in 2018 we have to mention that we don't want anything else, like having our data misused or shadow profiles being recorded.
  - lucb1e 9y ago
    > We can't just keep on operating in a world where everything is free Agreed! So let's pay fair and square, rather than them shuffling data around in a manner that is not completely transparent to us.
joering2 9y ago
With Mapquest, DuckDuckGo, Protonmail, AOL Videos and imgUrl?
- product50 9y ago
  Good luck to you trying to use these.
  - joering2 9y ago
    Honestly curious what you have against DuckDuckGo or Protonmail, same with MapQuest.
    - product50 9y ago
      You cannot be honest if you are asking this question. You are comparing MapQuest with Google Maps and are asking me, in all earnest, what is that I find better in GMaps? Similarly with Protonmail and GMail. How about email spam to start with? Or maybe email search? What about automatic filters? Or what about the fact the Protonmail is a subscription service if you want to use their advanced features.
      - joering2 9y ago
        I don't get any spam on Protonmail, they already have strong filters. I don't use any automatic filters, but I could use their "Bridge" tools and install Bat on my Laptop and setup filters this way. Way more advance features in Bat than in Gmail. Protonmail is subscription service, true. But just like I can afford $5 per day for a good coffee, I can afford $1 per day for a secure, encrypted email; although I can believe for someone living in third world country, $30 seem a fortune, and I don't blame you for your country's economical situation. And if you prefer gmail for free and be their product that they analyze, dissect it and categorize you based on the content of your email then that's fine with me; I really don't care. You are simply their product, but with your HN username, I doubt I had to tell you that :)
        9y ago
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
When you realize how dependent you are on one company, why not work to reduce that? Their policies could change at any time. Or you could get banned. It's worth the effort to diversify your resources and ensure you have a backup plan.
- product50 9y ago
  I don't see anything wrong in it. I don't have strong qualms on protecting every part of my online or offline presence. In fact I like that I get targeted with better ads which might be more relevant to me. And Google also benefits by making higher ad revenue (based on my data) which they reinvest in the product to make it better. I don't see a problem here at all.
kuschku 9y ago
> No Maps Here Maps or OpenStreetMap > No Search I’ve switched to a mix of Qwant and DuckDuckGo, depending on question > No GMail I’ve been self-hosting all my mail for 4 years now, works fine thanks to simple solutions such as this tutorial https://workaround.org/ispmail https://workaround.org/ispmail > No YouTube This is the largest issue, but most of what I consume is either music or streams, and most of the streams are also on twitch, and the music is also available for sale on CD, or on Spotify. > No Photos I use seafile with automated upload and a custom-built photos UI frontend to provide a photo gallery for me, and to allow me to share photos. I use the tensorflow pre-trained example model for object classification to tag the images, it’s good enough. For sharing other images, I’m building a custom imgur clone (GPLv3) https://git.kuschku.de/justJanne/imghost https://git.kuschku.de/justJanne/imghost and https://git.kuschku.de/justJanne/imghost-frontend https://git.kuschku.de/justJanne/imghost-frontend, example: https://i.k8r.eu/i/cXqmnQ https://i.k8r.eu/i/cXqmnQ For most normal people, living without Google services may be complicated. But this is HN, we’re basically all software engineers capable of building our own solutions, and they don’t have to handle nearly as many edge cases. I don’t need to translate my image host into 108 languages, just english is fine (even if it’s not my native language). For people like us, it’s not that complicated to free ourselves of Google, and, in the long term, even self-host everything.
- langitbiru 9y ago
  Yes, I can live without Google Map, Google Search, GMail, Photos, but Youtube is unavoidable. For me, Youtube is more than just music or cute videos. I learn programming, mathematics, physics a lot from Youtube. :(
  - WovenTales 9y ago
    It's still not getting completely away from Google, and they could probably still track you through IP, but I've been really happy with the NewPipe client for Android; it's attempting to provide all the features of browsing without falling back on any official API and certainly without needing an account. There are a few features that aren't out yet (most notably comments, notifications, and YT-user playlists, though it can play the latter if you get the link through another browser) but it gives you an offline subscription list and in my opinion is more comfortable to use than the official app.

lucb1e 9y ago

> As such, with Google, I am more than ok them using my data Woah, that was a very different conclusion than I was expecting. The post builds up to how terribly dependent you are, but concludes with "so I'm very happy". I see your reasoning and your point, but don't forget what kind of relation this is (where you pay very little to nothing for most services, money-wise...).

product50 9y ago
I am happy to pay them money or pay with data. Choose your thing. We can't just keep on operating in a world where everything is free and we don't want targeted ads. And I never used "I'm so very happy". This is where biases come in. My goal was to say that Google services are very useful (to me) and I am ok if in return I have to give them my data.
- draggnar 9y ago
  I'm very happy to pay them, just like a utility.
  - product50 9y ago
    That makes sense. I will do it as well if advertising wasn't a model. In some ways, YouTube already allows that with Red. I wonder how many people are like you though outside the tech forums and especially in developing countries (where a lot of the users for US based tech companies come from).
  - droidist2 9y ago
    I don't feel like many people would though, even if it was a one-time $0.99 purchase.
    - product50 9y ago
      One time $0.99 won't justify this. Companies can make far more money per user from ads. It has to be a subscription model for it to be tenable.
      - Erlangolem 9y ago
        I believe FB makes something like $6.50 per user. Obviously Google makes money from users too, and given overlap it seems likely that one user is worth quite a bit annually. Average that out over lifetime value, and we’re talking thousands of dollars. Imagine if the likes of Equifax treated silos of data as a liability instead of an asset to be milked. Properly valued, a breach of hundreds of millions of people’s data would end a business, even as large as Equifax.
        aylmao 9y ago
        This is interesting actually. In theory it makes sense for them to offer a subscription that gets rid of ads, and if priced well it could make them more money on a user than ads. I'm sure a few people would be pay $5.99 - $9.99 for ad-free Facebook, especially if this means getting rid of video ads too. Yet, if too many people opt for the paid option, technically advertiser value would fall, since less users would be targetable. Moreover, $6.50 average per user means they probably make close to no money on some users, but a lot of money on others. If only their high-yielding users opt-in to an ad-less Facebook, this could mean big losses for them. I guess this is why they haven't offered a paid version as an option ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
        lucb1e 9y ago
        > I'm sure a few people would be pay $5.99 - $9.99 for ad-free Facebook It's not about the ads, it's about the tracking, profiling, and sharing/selling our data. If I could pay a few dollars a month (I guess Facebook would be worth $3-5/mo to me, and Google $5-10/mo) and get out of the whole tracking/voter-manipulation/profiling/sharing data/etc. thing, that'd be worth it. That would have to include that any non-essential data is not recorded or (if I previously was on the free tier and am now paying for a year or so) permanently deleted. Of course many personal things fall in the 'necessary for functionality' category, like chat history and which pages I liked, but part of the deal is not using that data for anything other than the service itself. And if I decide to go to a competitor, I don't want to be blackmailed into paying to keep it private, so I'd want to have an option to permanently take out and delete my data once I leave. Sounds like a tough bargain, given all the restrictions I'm putting on it, but the alternative is the current state where I'm not making them any money at all. Not using it is worth it to me, despite missing out on a few things. And I don't think the requirements are unfair, I'm just asking them to provide service X for price Y without anything else, but apparently in 2018 we have to mention that we don't want anything else, like having our data misused or shadow profiles being recorded.
- lucb1e 9y ago
  > We can't just keep on operating in a world where everything is free Agreed! So let's pay fair and square, rather than them shuffling data around in a manner that is not completely transparent to us.

joering2 9y ago

With Mapquest, DuckDuckGo, Protonmail, AOL Videos and imgUrl?

product50 9y ago
Good luck to you trying to use these.
- joering2 9y ago
  Honestly curious what you have against DuckDuckGo or Protonmail, same with MapQuest.
  - product50 9y ago
    You cannot be honest if you are asking this question. You are comparing MapQuest with Google Maps and are asking me, in all earnest, what is that I find better in GMaps? Similarly with Protonmail and GMail. How about email spam to start with? Or maybe email search? What about automatic filters? Or what about the fact the Protonmail is a subscription service if you want to use their advanced features.
    - joering2 9y ago
      I don't get any spam on Protonmail, they already have strong filters. I don't use any automatic filters, but I could use their "Bridge" tools and install Bat on my Laptop and setup filters this way. Way more advance features in Bat than in Gmail. Protonmail is subscription service, true. But just like I can afford $5 per day for a good coffee, I can afford $1 per day for a secure, encrypted email; although I can believe for someone living in third world country, $30 seem a fortune, and I don't blame you for your country's economical situation. And if you prefer gmail for free and be their product that they analyze, dissect it and categorize you based on the content of your email then that's fine with me; I really don't care. You are simply their product, but with your HN username, I doubt I had to tell you that :)
      - 9y ago

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

When you realize how dependent you are on one company, why not work to reduce that? Their policies could change at any time. Or you could get banned. It's worth the effort to diversify your resources and ensure you have a backup plan.

product50 9y ago
I don't see anything wrong in it. I don't have strong qualms on protecting every part of my online or offline presence. In fact I like that I get targeted with better ads which might be more relevant to me. And Google also benefits by making higher ad revenue (based on my data) which they reinvest in the product to make it better. I don't see a problem here at all.

kuschku 9y ago

> No Maps Here Maps or OpenStreetMap > No Search I’ve switched to a mix of Qwant and DuckDuckGo, depending on question > No GMail I’ve been self-hosting all my mail for 4 years now, works fine thanks to simple solutions such as this tutorial https://workaround.org/ispmail https://workaround.org/ispmail > No YouTube This is the largest issue, but most of what I consume is either music or streams, and most of the streams are also on twitch, and the music is also available for sale on CD, or on Spotify. > No Photos I use seafile with automated upload and a custom-built photos UI frontend to provide a photo gallery for me, and to allow me to share photos. I use the tensorflow pre-trained example model for object classification to tag the images, it’s good enough. For sharing other images, I’m building a custom imgur clone (GPLv3) https://git.kuschku.de/justJanne/imghost https://git.kuschku.de/justJanne/imghost and https://git.kuschku.de/justJanne/imghost-frontend https://git.kuschku.de/justJanne/imghost-frontend, example: https://i.k8r.eu/i/cXqmnQ https://i.k8r.eu/i/cXqmnQ For most normal people, living without Google services may be complicated. But this is HN, we’re basically all software engineers capable of building our own solutions, and they don’t have to handle nearly as many edge cases. I don’t need to translate my image host into 108 languages, just english is fine (even if it’s not my native language). For people like us, it’s not that complicated to free ourselves of Google, and, in the long term, even self-host everything.

langitbiru 9y ago
Yes, I can live without Google Map, Google Search, GMail, Photos, but Youtube is unavoidable. For me, Youtube is more than just music or cute videos. I learn programming, mathematics, physics a lot from Youtube. :(
- WovenTales 9y ago
  It's still not getting completely away from Google, and they could probably still track you through IP, but I've been really happy with the NewPipe client for Android; it's attempting to provide all the features of browsing without falling back on any official API and certainly without needing an account. There are a few features that aren't out yet (most notably comments, notifications, and YT-user playlists, though it can play the latter if you get the link through another browser) but it gives you an offline subscription list and in my opinion is more comfortable to use than the official app.