14 ms·

A majority of consumers do not expect Google to track their activities

336 points by jeremiahlee 8y ago

saagarjha 8y ago
Some of the results presented aren't what I'd call a significant majority, aside from the three in the middle of the article. Edit: It seems the article title has been updated.
jonfw 8y ago
How long until this starts to seriously hurt big tech companies? It can't be too much longer now. The dream is that the market will see this and can solve this problem without need of government intervention. Do you all think that this is feasible? Or do we need more legislation?
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  The biggest problem with expecting the market to solve privacy problems is that the way companies use your data is not visible to the user. Even when companies do disclose it, it's often buried in hard-to-understand text. While the 1% or 2% of us who care may focus on it, it's extremely unlikely the general populace will really grasp the full ramifications of how these corporations operate. A company is far more likely to lose public support from it's tendency to axe beloved products with regularity than from it's privacy abuse, even though the former is not an inherent societal wrong.
  - jonfw 8y ago
    Is it only 1% or 2% anymore? I feel like these past couple of election cycles have really alerted people to some of the issues we are talking about. But maybe It's just in my circles.
- fixermark 8y ago
  > It can't be too much longer now. That's really unclear. Users' behavior regarding their own personal data and their claims of privacy expectations seem to deviate pretty significantly. I once nearly sold a company loyalty card to a guy at a bookstore buying a forearm-length stack of books on "Privacy in the digital age." We got as far as the part where I was asking him for his address and date of birth before he politely declined. I've heard the issue most pithily described as "People, when asked, will consistently give two answers: (a) they would like more of their personal information kept private, and (b) yes, they would be happy to fill out the deeply-detailed shopper demographic survey in the mall for a Snickers bar."
- syn0byte 8y ago
  Does the free market care about how happy it's cows are? Do McDonald's products suffer when cows are unhappy? Does Camberage Analytics give a crap about what you like, does it affect their products? Moo.
  - jonfw 8y ago
    I'm sure as hell not a cow, so I don't really see your point. The market would be a lot more concerned about the happiness of cows if cows had the independence and the personal rights to switch farms. Consumers are not property and have free will. Equating them to cows shows an extremely serious lack of faith in humanity from you.
  - matz1 8y ago
    Which is good. It's sucks if i have to pay more for a burger because the cow have to be happy.
- codedokode 8y ago
  Currently it is tech companies who hurt people's privacy and anonimity. They definitely deserve "intervention".
mc32 8y ago
I think they could have added one more twin question to all for clarification. Do you expect... and Do you want... (are pleased that, okay with)... I think people expect them to take those kinds of liberties but would rather they did not take those liberties.
treis 8y ago
The numbers don't make sense: >Do you expect Google to collect data about a person’s activities on Google platforms? >Do you expect Google to collect and merge data about a person’s search activities with activities on its other applications? The second got 10% more "yes" responses than the first, but answering "yes" to the second question logically requires a "yes" to the first one.
- hopler 8y ago
  The numbers make sense. People don't make sense. Humans are notoriously bad at conditional probability
- scott_s 8y ago
  People don't make sense. It's entirely possible for people to having logically conflicting assumptions without realizing those assumptions conflict. How people respond to questions is also influenced by how the question is asked, and even the order the questions are asked. Making good surveys are hard for that reason, as once you recognize logically inconsistent trends, you have to figure out if the result is due to the survey itself, or you truly revealed a quirk about how people think about the topic.
  - teej 8y ago
    In this case it’s just poor survey question design.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I don’t understand your comment. Why do you think the two questions are related? As I read them, the first is just about collecting data on Google platforms (said data might be kept separated per each platform). The second question is about attempting to tie search data with other collected data. Someone might for example expect Google to try to tie your search history to other places, but at the same time expect Google to simply not collect much data in a variety of other services / business products / whatever. The second question getting more “yes” responses seems perfectly consistent to me, and answering yes to the second does not at all require answering yes to the first to maintain logical consistency.
redwards510 8y ago
I have a really hard time grokking their lead-in "Do you expect...?" What does that mean exactly? Or more importantly, what does it mean to the respondents? > "Do you expect Google to collect data about a person’s locations when a person is not using a Google platform or app?" I have a feeling many people read that as "Do you want Google...." Saying "Do you expect" feels like a cynical "Do you think Google will do something you don't want them to do but are helpless to prevent, because they are a huge, uncaring, profit-obsessed corporation?" in which case, all questions can be answered "Yes" regardless of topic because the underlying cause is the same to the respondent. "Are you aware that Google does X" might be a less loaded way to ask these.
- hopler 8y ago
  "expect" is a technical term, as in bug reports where you wrote Observed Behavior and Expected Behavior. It is confusing/misleading for survey respondents, though.
  - ucaetano 8y ago
    Expect is a technical term in the context of computers, not humans.
  - lucasmullens 8y ago
    Something isn't a technical term for having a technical use-case. Expectations existed long before technology.
  - kortilla 8y ago
    “I expect you to arrive at the airport 2 hours before departure.” Doesn’t sound technical to me.
- jonfw 8y ago
  I think asking "are you aware" is a different question. Most non-tech people have barely done any research on this and probably have never even looked into it. You're sharing information and asking questions about it at the same time. Sort of a cross-contamination IMO.
fxbl0i 8y ago
How many of those consumers expect to keep using Google services for free?
- jonfw 8y ago
  Both senses of the word free work beautifully together. Free as in beer and free as in speech. We shouldn't put up with violations of our personal liberty for no-cost software. Tech is such a young industry- we still have time to shape it into a place that can be free in both senses of the word. Just because shareholders demand it doesn't mean that consumers should accept immorality.
  - geddy 8y ago
    >We shouldn't put up with violations of our personal liberty for no-cost software This is exactly what we've been torpedoing towards since Google Docs came out and people didn't have to pay for Acrobat Reader to see PDFs. Unfortunately from free services where the user is the product, and free apps with in-app purchases on mobile, the general public has been conditioned to never spend a dime, privacy be damned. We did it to ourselves.
    - fixermark 8y ago
      Not only did we do it to ourselves, we're mostly enjoying and benefitting from it. The alternative (where all software is pay-to-play) actually shuts out the vast bulk of the world's population that doesn't have chips to play yet.
      - max76 8y ago
        A lot of software, like Libre Office, neither track users, nor sells advertising space, nor charges users. For important infrastructure pieces, like how businesses communicate with each other, we should strive for this level of privacy and availability.
        8y ago
VectorLock 8y ago
I just got a "Your March In Review" email from "Google Maps Timeline." I wasn't surprised by it but I think for other people seeing it presenting you a map with every place your phone has ever been will be very eye opening.
- lkbm 8y ago
  They've been doing this for years for me. Did they just recently turn on location services by default or something?
  - VectorLock 8y ago
    Not sure I've never seen these emails before but I've had location services on for quite a long time-- the map shows at least 5 years of data.
wolco 8y ago
We are one big movie away from everyone knowing. Too bad it would be killed before reaching the masses.
- fixermark 8y ago
  It was called "The Circle," it came out in 2017, and it did $40.7 million at the box office on a budget of $18 million.
  - wolco 8y ago
    I was not aware. Sounds like it didn't reach critical mass
    - fixermark 8y ago
      I'm looking for numbers on tickets sold but I don't know how to get them easily. Honestly, part of the problem may be that audiences for movies self-select for what they want to see, and there may be an upper bound on how many people you can pull in for a psychological thriller. That seems to echo the issue with online privacy in general---the hard first step is getting people to care, at all.
once-in-a-while 8y ago
People are waking up, are being red pilled, are joining Q Anon. G..gle is already losing, and nobody can stop its downfall. FB, twatter ecc. will follow...
ankit219 8y ago
Maybe, if we popularize the part about data export enough, people will come to realize the kind of things google tracks. I took one data dump last year and unsurprisingly, since I had an android device, Google knew a lot about me. In that order: Devices, Installs, Library (superset of all apps ever installed), Order history, Purchase history, then all my contacts, even the ones I starred on android, then every order I ever placed on anywhere and got a receipt in gmail (it also stored it separately as purchases) with price, ticket number, frequent flyer, merchant, and so on. I was expecting a bit of this so did not feel creeped out, but if more people see it, they will be horrified. Granted, this is when I stop google from recording the data whenever I can - search history, location history, and so on. Edit: Anecdote wise, Google has a more accurate list of all the addresses I have ever lived at, than I do. They record the address of every physical delivery at whichever place I asked my shipment to be delivered. I have lived at 7-8 different homes (in three cities) in the past 6 years, and I dont have those addresses on hand either. But yeah, google might.
throw2016 8y ago
This is not because consumers are 'ignorant' or stupid but because of willful deception and complete lack of transparency from Google. What do Google engineers think when they design those deceptive 'improve user experience' dialogs, are they thinking consumers are 'stupid' or are they being extremely shady? Android being designed to leak like a sieve and Google hoovering up your data without transparency is NOT the users fault, its Google and its engineers willfully engaging in unethical behavior in pursuit of profits. Its can't be that educated people do not know or understand privacy is a basic human right, and collecting and collating data is fundamentally shady and invasive behavior. Once the public understand the full extent of the collection, collation and behavioral targeting in play and regulations start flowing these companies and the engineers who built these systems are going to be tainted.
alkonaut 8y ago
I expect to be able to use Google Products and only pay for them with cursory glances (no clicks) at ads beside search results targeted only by the keywords I searched for and a geographic guesstimate. I’d say they crossed the “don’t be evil” line when they show me a sponsored link based on something than the current search.
siffland 8y ago
OK seriously, the other day at work we were talking about a coworker and one of my other coworkers said, oh you mean Sam Elliot because the first coworker looks like Sam Elliot from Roadhouse. Then there was a 15 minute discussion about the film Roadhouse. I went home and on my youtube recommended videos to watch was one about the movie Roadhouse. I only had my phone on my desk and my work desktop has no internet access. Is this just coincidence¿ Just yesterday i watched Running Man on my Plex Player running on my raspberry pi. Again I now have multiple Running Man videos in my youtube queue. I hate it but feel so helpless about it. Maybe it is all coincidence and i am just that lucky and should buy a lottery ticket. Does anyone else have this stuff happen?
- mruts 8y ago
  Are you suggesting your phone recorded you and your coworkers and then suggested ads based on that? Maybe I'm not paranoid enough, but I find that.. improbable? Not out of the question, I guess, but still pretty improbable. Maybe you could run some experiments and try and disprove the null hypothesis?
  - shhehebehdh 8y ago
    If Google were that smart, it would be pretty impressive. But I doubt we are.
  - o10449366 8y ago
    It's been extensively tested and debunked by many, many people and yet it's a myth that continues to perpetuate HN. The idea that these big companies or Big Brother are streaming your phone microphone data 24/7 is a lot more romantic than "the public wifi network I'm connected to is riddled with analytics."
    - cc439 8y ago
      The idea that your phone's microphone isn't constantly parsing speech into text and then occasionally uploading certain keywords to whichever major advertising platform (FB, Google, Amazon, etc) has an active app on the phone doesn't seem so far fetched. We know Android and Apple phones are generally always listening for their keyword phrase (Siri, Hey Google, etc) for voice-based AI assistants and that their speech-to-text support is very robust. Uploading a text log is very data efficient and becomes even more efficient if it merely sends a positive for certain keywords it's told to listen for based on the individual's demographic profile and advertiser's interest in said demographics. I've had enough "coincidences" happen to believe this can be explained otherwise.
johnchristopher 8y ago
If whatsapp could grow by asking users for one dollar, couldn't the same be achieved in the search engine space ? A dollar a month or a year to get my private bubble search ? Or are the costs to run a search engine too high and the ad industry is necessary to keep it afloat ?
- sz4kerto 8y ago
  1) WhatsApp didn't make too much revenue out of those 1 dollars. Most people never paid. 2) If you're willing to pay a dollar per month for search then you are much more valuable to advertisers than most people, so 1 dollar won't be enough.
  - johnchristopher 8y ago
    > 1) WhatsApp didn't make too much revenue out of those 1 dollars. Most people never paid. They made enough to be sustainable: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/040915/how-whatsapp-makes-money.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/04091... > 2) If you're willing to pay a dollar per month for search then you are much more valuable to advertisers than most people, so 1 dollar won't be enough. No. It seems as a Google user I am worth more to them when I am tied to advertisers https://arkenea.com/blog/big-tech-companies-user-worth/ https://arkenea.com/blog/big-tech-companies-user-worth/ or https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/heres-much-google-facebook-really-think-youre-worth.html/ https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/heres-much-google-fa... I don't get your point though. I want to be valuable to people building a search engine without adtech baked in, how much I am valuable right now to advertisers doesn't matter.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
miguelmota 8y ago
It seems that those who respond that they don't expect Google to track their activities are simply unaware of Google's business model of selling ad slots based on people's activities.
- wilde 8y ago
  That’s a little unfair. The AdWords business model doesn’t require personalization. They could run straight keyword auctions. They don’t.
KorematsuFred 8y ago
Lol. And how do they expect Google to pay for their state of art free Email, Docs, Drive, YouTube Video storage ? Almost every job today from a Starbucks Barista to Uber driver depends on Google doing its job well and collecting all the data it does. Ask people if they still support data collection from Google. As a small business owner are you happy if Google stops collecting private data but you make 5% less revenue ? (Small businesses depend on Adsense and other technologies to seek customers).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- bartimus 8y ago
  I would not be surprised if one day there's a form of free housing just so they get to provide you with their services: Groceries, meals, deliveries, clothes, television shows etc etc. Need to move to a different town? They have your point to point transportation covered. Also your closet was automatically transported in the background. Your nomad belongings waiting for you as soon as you arrive.
- o10449366 8y ago
  They can continue to use advertising to fund their services without being opaque about what exactly they're collecting and when. The two aren't mutually exclusive and keeping services free isn't a compelling argument for breaches of privacy. Many people were surprised to find out Google was still tracking them even when location services were turned off, but only because they buried the option within the legal and TOS menu of their phone app instead of the separate privacy and location section[0]. These dark patterns are what surprise people. [0]: https://www.wired.com/story/google-location-tracking-turn-off/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-location-tracking-turn-of...
- kortilla 8y ago
  Is your excuse for keeping the public in the dark really “but look at the shiny free stuff”?
- fenwick67 8y ago
  > Almost every job today from a Starbucks Barista to Uber driver depends on Google doing its job well and collecting all the data it does. This is a ludicrous statement. If Google shut down, all of these jobs would still exist.
VWWHFSfQ 8y ago
Go to https://myactivity.google.com https://myactivity.google.com Now understand that is only what Google is collecting when you're explicitly using their services. Any apps or sites that use GA or any other Google SDKs are also being collected and sent to Google and correlated back to your Google identity. I discovered this when I found that Google knew every restaurant I viewed on Seamless. Every Reddit post I saw.
8bitsrule 8y ago
I recently overheard someone say "They already know everything about me anyway, so I decided I might as well sign up with them."
smadurange 8y ago
From my experience, the broad opinion on this seems that people just don't care. Sometimes I share with my colleagues what I learn about Google doing at times (and these colleagues are software engineers) and what I get are 1. It's free, why are you complaining 2. There's no choice 3. Google has the best products (this was referring to Google docs stuff) May be you guys can let me know what you think about those answers.
jedberg 8y ago
Consumers don't expect Google to track you yet are delighted when they search for "haircut" and then click on a link on their computer and then have that place show up on Google Maps on their phone as the recommended destination for driving directions. How do they think that happened?!
ct520 8y ago
Makes sense. People voted for trump too
Proven 8y ago
A majority of customers (voters, etc) are morons. They should expect it and it’s not even Google’s job to teach them that. Honestly, what is the point of demanding that even most careless users get “protected” (which is impossible) when we already know they’ll eventually install other spyware while everybody else will end up with GDPR-like costa and annoyances?
teekert 8y ago
I do expect it and I feel dirty because of it. But I need my banking app and I like my OnePlus3 and its camera. I run Lineage and I tried running without play services but I also really like Office365, Teams especially. Also my Banking App needs play services for notifications and NFC based paying, and I don't want to just download some APK for that. I know I can buy an iPhone but it costs about twice what my OP3 cost. I strongly feel like this is my own choice and should vote with my wallet, and I guess I did. I just feel dirty because of it.
codedokode 8y ago
Exactly. Main problem is that people treat a phone or computer as a tool that serves their needs and might not realize that in fact it serves someone's else needs. They cannot see the traffic their device sends to Google, they cannot examine Google's comprehensive databases. Data collection remains unnoticed, there are no icons and no warnings. Opting out of data collection is inconvenient. When I need to log into Google or any other large company service, I have to do it in a private tab. When I want to run skype or slack, I have to create a separate OS account for them because major linux distributions don't have any protections preventing slack from reading my browser's history. Oh, and did you notice that Linux Slack app opens a browser to log in? I guess the reason for it might be that they want to store cookies in the browser and track the user across the Internet.
teekert 8y ago
It would be nice if Google did it like Canonical (they make Ubuntu), show what they send. In fact I wonder, under the GDPR, is this not illegal? It's my data, I need to be able to see it and approve what they do with it.

336 points by jeremiahlee 8y ago

Some of the results presented aren't what I'd call a significant majority, aside from the three in the middle of the article. Edit: It seems the article title has been updated.

jonfw 8y ago

How long until this starts to seriously hurt big tech companies? It can't be too much longer now. The dream is that the market will see this and can solve this problem without need of government intervention. Do you all think that this is feasible? Or do we need more legislation?

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
The biggest problem with expecting the market to solve privacy problems is that the way companies use your data is not visible to the user. Even when companies do disclose it, it's often buried in hard-to-understand text. While the 1% or 2% of us who care may focus on it, it's extremely unlikely the general populace will really grasp the full ramifications of how these corporations operate. A company is far more likely to lose public support from it's tendency to axe beloved products with regularity than from it's privacy abuse, even though the former is not an inherent societal wrong.
- jonfw 8y ago
  Is it only 1% or 2% anymore? I feel like these past couple of election cycles have really alerted people to some of the issues we are talking about. But maybe It's just in my circles.
fixermark 8y ago
> It can't be too much longer now. That's really unclear. Users' behavior regarding their own personal data and their claims of privacy expectations seem to deviate pretty significantly. I once nearly sold a company loyalty card to a guy at a bookstore buying a forearm-length stack of books on "Privacy in the digital age." We got as far as the part where I was asking him for his address and date of birth before he politely declined. I've heard the issue most pithily described as "People, when asked, will consistently give two answers: (a) they would like more of their personal information kept private, and (b) yes, they would be happy to fill out the deeply-detailed shopper demographic survey in the mall for a Snickers bar."
syn0byte 8y ago
Does the free market care about how happy it's cows are? Do McDonald's products suffer when cows are unhappy? Does Camberage Analytics give a crap about what you like, does it affect their products? Moo.
- jonfw 8y ago
  I'm sure as hell not a cow, so I don't really see your point. The market would be a lot more concerned about the happiness of cows if cows had the independence and the personal rights to switch farms. Consumers are not property and have free will. Equating them to cows shows an extremely serious lack of faith in humanity from you.
- matz1 8y ago
  Which is good. It's sucks if i have to pay more for a burger because the cow have to be happy.
codedokode 8y ago
Currently it is tech companies who hurt people's privacy and anonimity. They definitely deserve "intervention".

mc32 8y ago

I think they could have added one more twin question to all for clarification. Do you expect... and Do you want... (are pleased that, okay with)... I think people expect them to take those kinds of liberties but would rather they did not take those liberties.

treis 8y ago

The numbers don't make sense: >Do you expect Google to collect data about a person’s activities on Google platforms? >Do you expect Google to collect and merge data about a person’s search activities with activities on its other applications? The second got 10% more "yes" responses than the first, but answering "yes" to the second question logically requires a "yes" to the first one.

hopler 8y ago
The numbers make sense. People don't make sense. Humans are notoriously bad at conditional probability
scott_s 8y ago
People don't make sense. It's entirely possible for people to having logically conflicting assumptions without realizing those assumptions conflict. How people respond to questions is also influenced by how the question is asked, and even the order the questions are asked. Making good surveys are hard for that reason, as once you recognize logically inconsistent trends, you have to figure out if the result is due to the survey itself, or you truly revealed a quirk about how people think about the topic.
- teej 8y ago
  In this case it’s just poor survey question design.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I don’t understand your comment. Why do you think the two questions are related? As I read them, the first is just about collecting data on Google platforms (said data might be kept separated per each platform). The second question is about attempting to tie search data with other collected data. Someone might for example expect Google to try to tie your search history to other places, but at the same time expect Google to simply not collect much data in a variety of other services / business products / whatever. The second question getting more “yes” responses seems perfectly consistent to me, and answering yes to the second does not at all require answering yes to the first to maintain logical consistency.

redwards510 8y ago

I have a really hard time grokking their lead-in "Do you expect...?" What does that mean exactly? Or more importantly, what does it mean to the respondents? > "Do you expect Google to collect data about a person’s locations when a person is not using a Google platform or app?" I have a feeling many people read that as "Do you want Google...." Saying "Do you expect" feels like a cynical "Do you think Google will do something you don't want them to do but are helpless to prevent, because they are a huge, uncaring, profit-obsessed corporation?" in which case, all questions can be answered "Yes" regardless of topic because the underlying cause is the same to the respondent. "Are you aware that Google does X" might be a less loaded way to ask these.

hopler 8y ago
"expect" is a technical term, as in bug reports where you wrote Observed Behavior and Expected Behavior. It is confusing/misleading for survey respondents, though.
- ucaetano 8y ago
  Expect is a technical term in the context of computers, not humans.
- lucasmullens 8y ago
  Something isn't a technical term for having a technical use-case. Expectations existed long before technology.
- kortilla 8y ago
  “I expect you to arrive at the airport 2 hours before departure.” Doesn’t sound technical to me.
jonfw 8y ago
I think asking "are you aware" is a different question. Most non-tech people have barely done any research on this and probably have never even looked into it. You're sharing information and asking questions about it at the same time. Sort of a cross-contamination IMO.

fxbl0i 8y ago

How many of those consumers expect to keep using Google services for free?

jonfw 8y ago
Both senses of the word free work beautifully together. Free as in beer and free as in speech. We shouldn't put up with violations of our personal liberty for no-cost software. Tech is such a young industry- we still have time to shape it into a place that can be free in both senses of the word. Just because shareholders demand it doesn't mean that consumers should accept immorality.
- geddy 8y ago
  >We shouldn't put up with violations of our personal liberty for no-cost software This is exactly what we've been torpedoing towards since Google Docs came out and people didn't have to pay for Acrobat Reader to see PDFs. Unfortunately from free services where the user is the product, and free apps with in-app purchases on mobile, the general public has been conditioned to never spend a dime, privacy be damned. We did it to ourselves.
  - fixermark 8y ago
    Not only did we do it to ourselves, we're mostly enjoying and benefitting from it. The alternative (where all software is pay-to-play) actually shuts out the vast bulk of the world's population that doesn't have chips to play yet.
    - max76 8y ago
      A lot of software, like Libre Office, neither track users, nor sells advertising space, nor charges users. For important infrastructure pieces, like how businesses communicate with each other, we should strive for this level of privacy and availability.
      - 8y ago

VectorLock 8y ago

I just got a "Your March In Review" email from "Google Maps Timeline." I wasn't surprised by it but I think for other people seeing it presenting you a map with every place your phone has ever been will be very eye opening.

lkbm 8y ago
They've been doing this for years for me. Did they just recently turn on location services by default or something?
- VectorLock 8y ago
  Not sure I've never seen these emails before but I've had location services on for quite a long time-- the map shows at least 5 years of data.

wolco 8y ago

We are one big movie away from everyone knowing. Too bad it would be killed before reaching the masses.

fixermark 8y ago
It was called "The Circle," it came out in 2017, and it did $40.7 million at the box office on a budget of $18 million.
- wolco 8y ago
  I was not aware. Sounds like it didn't reach critical mass
  - fixermark 8y ago
    I'm looking for numbers on tickets sold but I don't know how to get them easily. Honestly, part of the problem may be that audiences for movies self-select for what they want to see, and there may be an upper bound on how many people you can pull in for a psychological thriller. That seems to echo the issue with online privacy in general---the hard first step is getting people to care, at all.

once-in-a-while 8y ago

People are waking up, are being red pilled, are joining Q Anon. G..gle is already losing, and nobody can stop its downfall. FB, twatter ecc. will follow...

ankit219 8y ago

Maybe, if we popularize the part about data export enough, people will come to realize the kind of things google tracks. I took one data dump last year and unsurprisingly, since I had an android device, Google knew a lot about me. In that order: Devices, Installs, Library (superset of all apps ever installed), Order history, Purchase history, then all my contacts, even the ones I starred on android, then every order I ever placed on anywhere and got a receipt in gmail (it also stored it separately as purchases) with price, ticket number, frequent flyer, merchant, and so on. I was expecting a bit of this so did not feel creeped out, but if more people see it, they will be horrified. Granted, this is when I stop google from recording the data whenever I can - search history, location history, and so on. Edit: Anecdote wise, Google has a more accurate list of all the addresses I have ever lived at, than I do. They record the address of every physical delivery at whichever place I asked my shipment to be delivered. I have lived at 7-8 different homes (in three cities) in the past 6 years, and I dont have those addresses on hand either. But yeah, google might.

throw2016 8y ago

This is not because consumers are 'ignorant' or stupid but because of willful deception and complete lack of transparency from Google. What do Google engineers think when they design those deceptive 'improve user experience' dialogs, are they thinking consumers are 'stupid' or are they being extremely shady? Android being designed to leak like a sieve and Google hoovering up your data without transparency is NOT the users fault, its Google and its engineers willfully engaging in unethical behavior in pursuit of profits. Its can't be that educated people do not know or understand privacy is a basic human right, and collecting and collating data is fundamentally shady and invasive behavior. Once the public understand the full extent of the collection, collation and behavioral targeting in play and regulations start flowing these companies and the engineers who built these systems are going to be tainted.

alkonaut 8y ago

I expect to be able to use Google Products and only pay for them with cursory glances (no clicks) at ads beside search results targeted only by the keywords I searched for and a geographic guesstimate. I’d say they crossed the “don’t be evil” line when they show me a sponsored link based on something than the current search.

siffland 8y ago

OK seriously, the other day at work we were talking about a coworker and one of my other coworkers said, oh you mean Sam Elliot because the first coworker looks like Sam Elliot from Roadhouse. Then there was a 15 minute discussion about the film Roadhouse. I went home and on my youtube recommended videos to watch was one about the movie Roadhouse. I only had my phone on my desk and my work desktop has no internet access. Is this just coincidence¿ Just yesterday i watched Running Man on my Plex Player running on my raspberry pi. Again I now have multiple Running Man videos in my youtube queue. I hate it but feel so helpless about it. Maybe it is all coincidence and i am just that lucky and should buy a lottery ticket. Does anyone else have this stuff happen?

mruts 8y ago
Are you suggesting your phone recorded you and your coworkers and then suggested ads based on that? Maybe I'm not paranoid enough, but I find that.. improbable? Not out of the question, I guess, but still pretty improbable. Maybe you could run some experiments and try and disprove the null hypothesis?
- shhehebehdh 8y ago
  If Google were that smart, it would be pretty impressive. But I doubt we are.
- o10449366 8y ago
  It's been extensively tested and debunked by many, many people and yet it's a myth that continues to perpetuate HN. The idea that these big companies or Big Brother are streaming your phone microphone data 24/7 is a lot more romantic than "the public wifi network I'm connected to is riddled with analytics."
  - cc439 8y ago
    The idea that your phone's microphone isn't constantly parsing speech into text and then occasionally uploading certain keywords to whichever major advertising platform (FB, Google, Amazon, etc) has an active app on the phone doesn't seem so far fetched. We know Android and Apple phones are generally always listening for their keyword phrase (Siri, Hey Google, etc) for voice-based AI assistants and that their speech-to-text support is very robust. Uploading a text log is very data efficient and becomes even more efficient if it merely sends a positive for certain keywords it's told to listen for based on the individual's demographic profile and advertiser's interest in said demographics. I've had enough "coincidences" happen to believe this can be explained otherwise.

johnchristopher 8y ago

If whatsapp could grow by asking users for one dollar, couldn't the same be achieved in the search engine space ? A dollar a month or a year to get my private bubble search ? Or are the costs to run a search engine too high and the ad industry is necessary to keep it afloat ?

sz4kerto 8y ago
1) WhatsApp didn't make too much revenue out of those 1 dollars. Most people never paid. 2) If you're willing to pay a dollar per month for search then you are much more valuable to advertisers than most people, so 1 dollar won't be enough.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  > 1) WhatsApp didn't make too much revenue out of those 1 dollars. Most people never paid. They made enough to be sustainable: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/040915/how-whatsapp-makes-money.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/04091... > 2) If you're willing to pay a dollar per month for search then you are much more valuable to advertisers than most people, so 1 dollar won't be enough. No. It seems as a Google user I am worth more to them when I am tied to advertisers https://arkenea.com/blog/big-tech-companies-user-worth/ https://arkenea.com/blog/big-tech-companies-user-worth/ or https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/heres-much-google-facebook-really-think-youre-worth.html/ https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/heres-much-google-fa... I don't get your point though. I want to be valuable to people building a search engine without adtech baked in, how much I am valuable right now to advertisers doesn't matter.
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miguelmota 8y ago

It seems that those who respond that they don't expect Google to track their activities are simply unaware of Google's business model of selling ad slots based on people's activities.

wilde 8y ago
That’s a little unfair. The AdWords business model doesn’t require personalization. They could run straight keyword auctions. They don’t.

KorematsuFred 8y ago

Lol. And how do they expect Google to pay for their state of art free Email, Docs, Drive, YouTube Video storage ? Almost every job today from a Starbucks Barista to Uber driver depends on Google doing its job well and collecting all the data it does. Ask people if they still support data collection from Google. As a small business owner are you happy if Google stops collecting private data but you make 5% less revenue ? (Small businesses depend on Adsense and other technologies to seek customers).

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bartimus 8y ago
I would not be surprised if one day there's a form of free housing just so they get to provide you with their services: Groceries, meals, deliveries, clothes, television shows etc etc. Need to move to a different town? They have your point to point transportation covered. Also your closet was automatically transported in the background. Your nomad belongings waiting for you as soon as you arrive.
o10449366 8y ago
They can continue to use advertising to fund their services without being opaque about what exactly they're collecting and when. The two aren't mutually exclusive and keeping services free isn't a compelling argument for breaches of privacy. Many people were surprised to find out Google was still tracking them even when location services were turned off, but only because they buried the option within the legal and TOS menu of their phone app instead of the separate privacy and location section[0]. These dark patterns are what surprise people. [0]: https://www.wired.com/story/google-location-tracking-turn-off/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-location-tracking-turn-of...
kortilla 8y ago
Is your excuse for keeping the public in the dark really “but look at the shiny free stuff”?
fenwick67 8y ago
> Almost every job today from a Starbucks Barista to Uber driver depends on Google doing its job well and collecting all the data it does. This is a ludicrous statement. If Google shut down, all of these jobs would still exist.

VWWHFSfQ 8y ago

Go to https://myactivity.google.com https://myactivity.google.com Now understand that is only what Google is collecting when you're explicitly using their services. Any apps or sites that use GA or any other Google SDKs are also being collected and sent to Google and correlated back to your Google identity. I discovered this when I found that Google knew every restaurant I viewed on Seamless. Every Reddit post I saw.

8bitsrule 8y ago

I recently overheard someone say "They already know everything about me anyway, so I decided I might as well sign up with them."

smadurange 8y ago

From my experience, the broad opinion on this seems that people just don't care. Sometimes I share with my colleagues what I learn about Google doing at times (and these colleagues are software engineers) and what I get are 1. It's free, why are you complaining 2. There's no choice 3. Google has the best products (this was referring to Google docs stuff) May be you guys can let me know what you think about those answers.

jedberg 8y ago

Consumers don't expect Google to track you yet are delighted when they search for "haircut" and then click on a link on their computer and then have that place show up on Google Maps on their phone as the recommended destination for driving directions. How do they think that happened?!

ct520 8y ago

Makes sense. People voted for trump too

Proven 8y ago

A majority of customers (voters, etc) are morons. They should expect it and it’s not even Google’s job to teach them that. Honestly, what is the point of demanding that even most careless users get “protected” (which is impossible) when we already know they’ll eventually install other spyware while everybody else will end up with GDPR-like costa and annoyances?

teekert 8y ago

I do expect it and I feel dirty because of it. But I need my banking app and I like my OnePlus3 and its camera. I run Lineage and I tried running without play services but I also really like Office365, Teams especially. Also my Banking App needs play services for notifications and NFC based paying, and I don't want to just download some APK for that. I know I can buy an iPhone but it costs about twice what my OP3 cost. I strongly feel like this is my own choice and should vote with my wallet, and I guess I did. I just feel dirty because of it.

codedokode 8y ago

Exactly. Main problem is that people treat a phone or computer as a tool that serves their needs and might not realize that in fact it serves someone's else needs. They cannot see the traffic their device sends to Google, they cannot examine Google's comprehensive databases. Data collection remains unnoticed, there are no icons and no warnings. Opting out of data collection is inconvenient. When I need to log into Google or any other large company service, I have to do it in a private tab. When I want to run skype or slack, I have to create a separate OS account for them because major linux distributions don't have any protections preventing slack from reading my browser's history. Oh, and did you notice that Linux Slack app opens a browser to log in? I guess the reason for it might be that they want to store cookies in the browser and track the user across the Internet.

teekert 8y ago

It would be nice if Google did it like Canonical (they make Ubuntu), show what they send. In fact I wonder, under the GDPR, is this not illegal? It's my data, I need to be able to see it and approve what they do with it.