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"...Google is the destroyer of privacy. Google tracks their users at an unprecedented level in the whole history of humanity..." In fairness, you never had a p

"...Google is the destroyer of privacy. Google tracks their users at an unprecedented level in the whole history of humanity..." In fairness, you never had a problem with that privacy invasion before. You still respected them in spite of the fact that they were Gestapo-like privacy invaders. As evidenced by your claim that, "...the fact that Google pulled their search engine out of China, defying their censorship attempts, is one big reason for why I respected Google..." I've always been wary of Google. They are not our friends. They are here trying to make money off of us. They would sell any one of us out to any number of governments if they were asked. And they would do so without hesitation. That's the reason that we need to be mindful of what we disclose to companies like Google, Facebook, et al.

bad_user 8y ago
Well no, I did have a problem, I moved off GSuite to FastMail, I moved off Android, I'm a DuckDuckGo user, I went back to Firefox even before the Quantum release. But I had a lot of respect for Google for pulling out of China on censorship considerations and in fairness (unlike others) they seemed fairly responsible with how they treated the data they collect. Their security at least has been top notch, plus I've seen G employees with good values and a voice. But seeing them backtrack on a decision that I respected is pretty bad. I mean, it's worse if they've never pulled out of China in the first place. Because now I start thinking it was all a marketing stunt.
- shazow 8y ago
  Except there is clear evidence that FastMail employees are able and willing to read through your personal emails, and they've become actively user-hostile in their support: https://twitter.com/shazow/status/1021570521987731458 https://twitter.com/shazow/status/1021570521987731458 Make of it what you will, but I worked at Google for a time and I came out more convinced that my data is safer there. This was 2012 so maybe things have changed since then, but we need better alternatives than things like FastMail (and I'd argue Firefox, but that's for another thread).
  - pacala 8y ago
    Employee A reading email X does not scale. Google reading everyone's email with ever-better AI systems does scale, and is a much bigger threat to freedom, political or economical.
    - yifanl 8y ago
      You don't need deep machine learning to write a simple script to fetch data from your servers. If Google can read all Gmail users' emails, Fastmail can read all their users' emails.
      - goliatone 8y ago
        I think maybe the point is that reading all your emails seems to be Google’s business model, while FastMail is a service provider that charges users for the service? Also, regarding “your data” being more secure with google... is more like Google is good at securing their main asset, which is Google’s data about you.
        dmitrygr 8y ago
        Google no longer uses Gmail data for targeting. No person or ai is reading your email from your grandmother, florist, or then confirmation that you bought paper towels on Amazon.
    - BartBoch 8y ago
      But employee A can search for a very specific thing, something that machine learning won't be able to do. So it does not need to scale if they want to target a single person.
      - pacala 8y ago
        Employee A has no clue which person to target. Nor does he know which emails to pay attention to. His search tools are primitive. His brain's processing power is limited. OTOH, Google's core business is scalable search.
- mkol 8y ago
  Being wary of Google is a luxury. They control much of the technology market, if not the Internet, in both width and depth. Not using Google isn't a practical alternative for most people. Essentially everyone who works at Google can get a different job though. Here is the thing for me, I don't necessarily mind companies like Google doing business in China. But that isn't because I like the Chinese system, but because I believe there are other ways, like with regulation, you should stand up for your values. Whenever express those views on Hacker News I get downvoted, or called a shill. I get lectured about how the large tech companies are doing the right thing and how cool open source projects like signal, tor and bitcoin is going to save the world. I have to read through all the rants about how China is just protectionist, authoritarian and stealing intellectual property. This isn't like Microsoft who built a presence in China over time or Apple who has at least somewhat of a pretense for being in China because of manufacturing. Here is probably the best moment ever given, and there is ever going to be, for those people to show that this wasn't all defensive bullshit. And that when developers, engineers and hackers are actually given a choice where they can quit their job or cancel contracts they will do so for what they believe in. So I guess let's see what happens.
  - bad_user 8y ago
    > Being wary of Google is a luxury At this point in time, not really. There are better alternatives on the market for most of Google's services and products. Email: I think that most people with an Internet connection good enough to access GMail can afford to pay $4 / month for email and their own domain and there are multiple good alternatives available, like FastMail or ProtonMail. In some parts of this world with high levels of poverty, $4 might be a lot, but in western countries $4 is the price of one coffee and people do pay a lot of money on food and beverages. DuckDuckGo has been better for me lately after I deleted all of my search history from Google. It's weird, but Google is really bad without personalization. I wonder if they do it on purpose. DDG isn't the only choice. For EU users there's also Qwant, see: https://about.qwant.com/ https://about.qwant.com/ YouTube is hard to replace for users, but for creators Vimeo.com is much better. There's also PeerTube (joinpeertube.org) and increased awareness that YouTube is not good for projects that do NOT want ads, see the story of Blender being blocked: https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende... Google Drive is a piece of shit. The web interface is pretty good, however I've seen their desktop client ignore updates or corrupt data and I simply cannot trust it for anything. And I'm speaking both of Drive File Stream and their Backup and Sync consumer client. The comparison with Dropbox's desktop client is night and day. Also Microsoft's OneDrive is cheaper. And https://syncthing.net https://syncthing.net is free. Google Docs is OK for collaboration on documents, however their search is piss poor (we've been using Evernote because it has better search, Dropbox Paper too has better search), which means that collaboration in Google Docs doesn't scale, being where documents go to die. Also I'm catching offers for Office 365 Personal for about $25 per year and that's a superior choice for personal use. Google Maps is good, but their coverage isn't that great in Easter Europe where I've traveled and in Romania where I live. OpenStreetMaps is actually better here. Currently trying out Maps.me. Not great, there used to be a great app made by a Romanian company named Skobler, but got bought by Scout and then it stopped receiving updates. Some people get by with Apple's Maps and HERE WeGo (former Nokia) is OK. But yes, Google Maps sent me in the middle of nowhere, on a dirt road in the woods, while traveling through Bulgaria. Google Hangouts and Allo have never been popular and have plenty of alternatives. Zoom.us, Skype, Signal. The only difficult move is from Android. I have an iPhone now, but it is more expensive and I don't like its restrictions. But if you're set on escaping Google, you could always install CyanogenMod on your phone without Google Play / Services and instead go with Amazon's App Store and / or with https://f-droid.org https://f-droid.org.
hartator 8y ago
> Gestapo-like privacy invaders Hum, I don’t remember Google actions has led to the slaughter of milliona of people. But, please enlight me.
- knockingat3am 8y ago
  The Gestapo also didn't solely cause that.
- kushti 8y ago
  Alphabet Inc helped pro-American terrorists in Syria https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/12166#efmAMoAbj https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/12166#efmAMoAbj . Only a tribunal will show hopefully how many people were affected by this.
  - fixermark 8y ago
    I didn't know opposing the brutal Syrian dictatorship got people labeled "Gestapo," but here we are.
    - antt 8y ago
      There are many games where the only winning move is not to play. This is one of them. Helping either side is a crime against humanity.
smsm42 8y ago
Please stay away from Nazi comparisons like "Gestapo", unless it's actually comparable to actual actions of the Nazis. While Google privacy stance may be reprehensible and worrying, these privacy violations do not, last as I checked, imprison people in concentration camps, torture people, perpetuate ethnic cleansing on industrial scale and murder or imprison everyone opposing them. So let's please keep it in the sanity realm. Google (or at least some of it's actions) may be bad, but not nearly like Gestapo or anything Nazis did.
- mrep 8y ago
  28 years later and Godwin's law still rings true as ever: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1"
  - bad_user 8y ago
    It's a pretty stupid meme, even Mike Godwin said so.
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  Is it really? Google plans to comply with the CCP's censorship and information control plans. The Chinese government are quite literally putting an entire ethnicity inside concentration camps as we speak. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/china-re-education-camps.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/china-re-educatio... https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/24/islamic-leaders-have-nothing-to-say-about-chinas-internment-camps-for-muslims/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/24/islamic-leaders-have-no... No comparison warranted? The only thing refusing to compare the nazis to anything does is lets behavior like this thrive.
CobrastanJorji 8y ago
> They would sell any one of us out to any number of governments if they were asked. And they would do so without hesitation. Google's annual transparency report indicates that they reject about a third of all government requests for user info.

bad_user 8y ago

Well no, I did have a problem, I moved off GSuite to FastMail, I moved off Android, I'm a DuckDuckGo user, I went back to Firefox even before the Quantum release. But I had a lot of respect for Google for pulling out of China on censorship considerations and in fairness (unlike others) they seemed fairly responsible with how they treated the data they collect. Their security at least has been top notch, plus I've seen G employees with good values and a voice. But seeing them backtrack on a decision that I respected is pretty bad. I mean, it's worse if they've never pulled out of China in the first place. Because now I start thinking it was all a marketing stunt.

shazow 8y ago
Except there is clear evidence that FastMail employees are able and willing to read through your personal emails, and they've become actively user-hostile in their support: https://twitter.com/shazow/status/1021570521987731458 https://twitter.com/shazow/status/1021570521987731458 Make of it what you will, but I worked at Google for a time and I came out more convinced that my data is safer there. This was 2012 so maybe things have changed since then, but we need better alternatives than things like FastMail (and I'd argue Firefox, but that's for another thread).
- pacala 8y ago
  Employee A reading email X does not scale. Google reading everyone's email with ever-better AI systems does scale, and is a much bigger threat to freedom, political or economical.
  - yifanl 8y ago
    You don't need deep machine learning to write a simple script to fetch data from your servers. If Google can read all Gmail users' emails, Fastmail can read all their users' emails.
    - goliatone 8y ago
      I think maybe the point is that reading all your emails seems to be Google’s business model, while FastMail is a service provider that charges users for the service? Also, regarding “your data” being more secure with google... is more like Google is good at securing their main asset, which is Google’s data about you.
      - dmitrygr 8y ago
        Google no longer uses Gmail data for targeting. No person or ai is reading your email from your grandmother, florist, or then confirmation that you bought paper towels on Amazon.
  - BartBoch 8y ago
    But employee A can search for a very specific thing, something that machine learning won't be able to do. So it does not need to scale if they want to target a single person.
    - pacala 8y ago
      Employee A has no clue which person to target. Nor does he know which emails to pay attention to. His search tools are primitive. His brain's processing power is limited. OTOH, Google's core business is scalable search.
mkol 8y ago
Being wary of Google is a luxury. They control much of the technology market, if not the Internet, in both width and depth. Not using Google isn't a practical alternative for most people. Essentially everyone who works at Google can get a different job though. Here is the thing for me, I don't necessarily mind companies like Google doing business in China. But that isn't because I like the Chinese system, but because I believe there are other ways, like with regulation, you should stand up for your values. Whenever express those views on Hacker News I get downvoted, or called a shill. I get lectured about how the large tech companies are doing the right thing and how cool open source projects like signal, tor and bitcoin is going to save the world. I have to read through all the rants about how China is just protectionist, authoritarian and stealing intellectual property. This isn't like Microsoft who built a presence in China over time or Apple who has at least somewhat of a pretense for being in China because of manufacturing. Here is probably the best moment ever given, and there is ever going to be, for those people to show that this wasn't all defensive bullshit. And that when developers, engineers and hackers are actually given a choice where they can quit their job or cancel contracts they will do so for what they believe in. So I guess let's see what happens.
- bad_user 8y ago
  > Being wary of Google is a luxury At this point in time, not really. There are better alternatives on the market for most of Google's services and products. Email: I think that most people with an Internet connection good enough to access GMail can afford to pay $4 / month for email and their own domain and there are multiple good alternatives available, like FastMail or ProtonMail. In some parts of this world with high levels of poverty, $4 might be a lot, but in western countries $4 is the price of one coffee and people do pay a lot of money on food and beverages. DuckDuckGo has been better for me lately after I deleted all of my search history from Google. It's weird, but Google is really bad without personalization. I wonder if they do it on purpose. DDG isn't the only choice. For EU users there's also Qwant, see: https://about.qwant.com/ https://about.qwant.com/ YouTube is hard to replace for users, but for creators Vimeo.com is much better. There's also PeerTube (joinpeertube.org) and increased awareness that YouTube is not good for projects that do NOT want ads, see the story of Blender being blocked: https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende... Google Drive is a piece of shit. The web interface is pretty good, however I've seen their desktop client ignore updates or corrupt data and I simply cannot trust it for anything. And I'm speaking both of Drive File Stream and their Backup and Sync consumer client. The comparison with Dropbox's desktop client is night and day. Also Microsoft's OneDrive is cheaper. And https://syncthing.net https://syncthing.net is free. Google Docs is OK for collaboration on documents, however their search is piss poor (we've been using Evernote because it has better search, Dropbox Paper too has better search), which means that collaboration in Google Docs doesn't scale, being where documents go to die. Also I'm catching offers for Office 365 Personal for about $25 per year and that's a superior choice for personal use. Google Maps is good, but their coverage isn't that great in Easter Europe where I've traveled and in Romania where I live. OpenStreetMaps is actually better here. Currently trying out Maps.me. Not great, there used to be a great app made by a Romanian company named Skobler, but got bought by Scout and then it stopped receiving updates. Some people get by with Apple's Maps and HERE WeGo (former Nokia) is OK. But yes, Google Maps sent me in the middle of nowhere, on a dirt road in the woods, while traveling through Bulgaria. Google Hangouts and Allo have never been popular and have plenty of alternatives. Zoom.us, Skype, Signal. The only difficult move is from Android. I have an iPhone now, but it is more expensive and I don't like its restrictions. But if you're set on escaping Google, you could always install CyanogenMod on your phone without Google Play / Services and instead go with Amazon's App Store and / or with https://f-droid.org https://f-droid.org.

hartator 8y ago

> Gestapo-like privacy invaders Hum, I don’t remember Google actions has led to the slaughter of milliona of people. But, please enlight me.

knockingat3am 8y ago
The Gestapo also didn't solely cause that.
kushti 8y ago
Alphabet Inc helped pro-American terrorists in Syria https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/12166#efmAMoAbj https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/12166#efmAMoAbj . Only a tribunal will show hopefully how many people were affected by this.
- fixermark 8y ago
  I didn't know opposing the brutal Syrian dictatorship got people labeled "Gestapo," but here we are.
  - antt 8y ago
    There are many games where the only winning move is not to play. This is one of them. Helping either side is a crime against humanity.

smsm42 8y ago

Please stay away from Nazi comparisons like "Gestapo", unless it's actually comparable to actual actions of the Nazis. While Google privacy stance may be reprehensible and worrying, these privacy violations do not, last as I checked, imprison people in concentration camps, torture people, perpetuate ethnic cleansing on industrial scale and murder or imprison everyone opposing them. So let's please keep it in the sanity realm. Google (or at least some of it's actions) may be bad, but not nearly like Gestapo or anything Nazis did.

mrep 8y ago
28 years later and Godwin's law still rings true as ever: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1"
- bad_user 8y ago
  It's a pretty stupid meme, even Mike Godwin said so.
throwaway2048 8y ago
Is it really? Google plans to comply with the CCP's censorship and information control plans. The Chinese government are quite literally putting an entire ethnicity inside concentration camps as we speak. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/china-re-education-camps.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/china-re-educatio... https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/24/islamic-leaders-have-nothing-to-say-about-chinas-internment-camps-for-muslims/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/24/islamic-leaders-have-no... No comparison warranted? The only thing refusing to compare the nazis to anything does is lets behavior like this thrive.

CobrastanJorji 8y ago

> They would sell any one of us out to any number of governments if they were asked. And they would do so without hesitation. Google's annual transparency report indicates that they reject about a third of all government requests for user info.