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> which they could only have gathered by parsing my emails from the bank. You say it as if it's a revelation or discovery, when Google is very upfront about su

> which they could only have gathered by parsing my emails from the bank. You say it as if it's a revelation or discovery, when Google is very upfront about surfacing relevant information and reminders based on your inbox. On more than one occasion, this feature has helped me take actions on pending work items like payments, renewals and so on. You don't want Google to show you ads, fair enough. You don't want Google to surface for you (and only you) useful information that helps you organize your life. It almost sounds like you just want Google to give you hundreds of dollars of compute, storage and service out of the goodness of their hearts. I think both you and Google would be better off without each other.

blub 7y ago
Frankly, I'd reverse the question: why are you surprised that people are surprised? You think everybody has time to read the dozens of pages of legalese in Google's privacy policy, which anyway doesn't actually specify in which ways they abuse one's information? It also sounds like you need to organise your life a bit better. Google's notorious for their screw-ups and service closures, one day you might miss an important payment because they turned off the feature or you end up on the wrong side of an A/B test.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 7y ago
  "why are you surprised that people are surprised?" It'd be surprising if there wasn't a clear or direct causal path about how Google found that information. For example, imagine that you paid for a hotel room somewhere in Thailand by cash, didn't carry your phone with you at the time, didn't log in to any electronic device, and still Google inferred that you stayed there, THAT would be surprising. On the other hand, literally parsing out an email (AND even linking to it, you can click on the notifs to take you to the relevant email!!!) and showing you the result doesn't in any sense qualify as surprising.
  - darkwater 7y ago
    It wouldn't be "surprising" if the mail parsing were done 100% client side, with a 100% certainty that no data is gonna be sent back to the mothership. But since it's done 100% server side I cannot honestly know what they are going to do with that data and knowledge.
- BeetleB 7y ago
  >You think everybody has time to read the dozens of pages of legalese in Google's privacy policy, which anyway doesn't actually specify in which ways they abuse one's information? No, but I do think that everyone who gets a service for free should by default assume they don't have much privacy. That is not a huge burden to assume.
  - nullc 7y ago
    It is increasingly difficult to not use one of these "free" email services because of their aggressive blocking of any autonomously operated email servers.
    - BeetleB 7y ago
      Has Fastmail ever been blocked? I've used a paid email provider since before Gmail existed. They've not been blocked. I know there are the occasional posts on HN about Gmail blocking their servers, but I doubt it's anywhere close to the norm.

blub 7y ago

Frankly, I'd reverse the question: why are you surprised that people are surprised? You think everybody has time to read the dozens of pages of legalese in Google's privacy policy, which anyway doesn't actually specify in which ways they abuse one's information? It also sounds like you need to organise your life a bit better. Google's notorious for their screw-ups and service closures, one day you might miss an important payment because they turned off the feature or you end up on the wrong side of an A/B test.

kinkrtyavimoodh 7y ago
"why are you surprised that people are surprised?" It'd be surprising if there wasn't a clear or direct causal path about how Google found that information. For example, imagine that you paid for a hotel room somewhere in Thailand by cash, didn't carry your phone with you at the time, didn't log in to any electronic device, and still Google inferred that you stayed there, THAT would be surprising. On the other hand, literally parsing out an email (AND even linking to it, you can click on the notifs to take you to the relevant email!!!) and showing you the result doesn't in any sense qualify as surprising.
- darkwater 7y ago
  It wouldn't be "surprising" if the mail parsing were done 100% client side, with a 100% certainty that no data is gonna be sent back to the mothership. But since it's done 100% server side I cannot honestly know what they are going to do with that data and knowledge.
BeetleB 7y ago
>You think everybody has time to read the dozens of pages of legalese in Google's privacy policy, which anyway doesn't actually specify in which ways they abuse one's information? No, but I do think that everyone who gets a service for free should by default assume they don't have much privacy. That is not a huge burden to assume.
- nullc 7y ago
  It is increasingly difficult to not use one of these "free" email services because of their aggressive blocking of any autonomously operated email servers.
  - BeetleB 7y ago
    Has Fastmail ever been blocked? I've used a paid email provider since before Gmail existed. They've not been blocked. I know there are the occasional posts on HN about Gmail blocking their servers, but I doubt it's anywhere close to the norm.