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I think this comment is a great example of why I think most of the privacy concerns, especially around Google these days, are mostly overblown. I am not afraid
by beaner 8y ago
I think this comment is a great example of why I think most of the privacy concerns, especially around Google these days, are mostly overblown.
I am not afraid of that example happening because that is not how Google operates.
Google makes money by connecting ads to search queries. An advertiser makes an ad, says "make it appear for the term 'xbox'", and it shows up on Google for searches of Xbox.
The advertiser has absolutely no idea who I am, and google never "sold my data".
Who would even by such data in any volume meaningful enough for Google to consider it as a source of revenue compared to ads, especially given the privacy concerns?
I don't know for sure, but I suspect that Google's own terms even explicitly prevent them from revealing my identity in such a way.
To be Frank, I have a suspicion that HN has been bamboozled by a continuous Apple smear campaign. When Android started becoming more of a threat, and they pretty obviously couldn't take on things like Maps, they defaulted to an argument that they sort of have by default, by virtue of the fact that they sell hardware, not software: Privacy.
And they're not even that good at it. Remember the mac root mistake not too long ago? Google actually has to maintain strict data privacy to survive. Apple, not so much. It's an easy argument for them to promote, and people are lapping it up.
Google had a "data extraction team" (I forget what it was actually called), before it was even cool. It was a team internally years ago that was like, "people have a right to view, export, and remove their own data, so we're going to build that into Google products." And they were allowed to do that. Like, years ago. A long time before this recent wave of skepticism started. I always appreciated that. You heard stories of that kind of thing from Google, then. Hardly ever competitors.
- romed 8y agoYou’re thinking of the Data Liberation Front, who built the feature known as Takeout.
- olliej 8y agoNo. Google makes money off connecting ads to profiles. The vast majority of ads you see are not on search result pages. They’re on arbitrary non-google related pages, so to make that work google has basically moved to a “track everything this person does online so we can build and sell a profile of them”. Your argument about data privacy is a nonsense - what matters is data security - Their business depends on them being able to read the information they have accumulated and then indirectly selling it. That is fundamentally opposed to data privacy - which would mean only you could read that information. You say apple doesn’t have the same “privacy” requirements, but what you mean is the Apple isn’t dependent on their users data for income. Even then Apple encrypts ever increasing amounts of user data so that even if they are compromised the data isn’t useful to anyone. If google did care about privacy then when your email came in they would filter spam, encrypt, and then discard the plaintext. That’s the best you can do because email security is laughable by design. They’d still have huge amounts of information, but at the very least they wouldn’t be able to retroactively crawl your mail box.
- beaner 8y agoI don't know that your post argues anything meaningful to me. Connecting ads to profiles over ads to search - okay. That doesn't seem super different. The point is the advertiser doesn't know who I am. That's mostly what I care about. If google couldn't read my email, they couldn't give me features like when my flight is departing. That's a feature I appreciate. The point I was trying to make is that people seem to believe that Google reveals your identity and personal details to advertisers for profit, which is false.
- onion2k 8y agoGoogle makes money by connecting ads to search queries. An advertiser makes an ad, says "make it appear for the term 'xbox'", and it shows up on Google for searches of Xbox. This implies that two people who search "xbox" will see the same advert. That is absolutely not the case. Advertisers can target specific groups. Just log in to AdSense and you can easily see the options. They're not a secret.
- beaner 8y agoBut this is still in line with my expectations. The advertiser knows someone matching a profile sees the ad. They don't know that person is me.