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Google makes 80% of revenue from ads. It covers the entire web with adsense/adwords, records anything you search, has users login to chrome, scans gmail for pur

Google makes 80% of revenue from ads. It covers the entire web with adsense/adwords, records anything you search, has users login to chrome, scans gmail for purchase history, tracks your gps location and where you live and work with your commute + waze.. plus much more through android. It has microphones in homes and knows about all your iot devices with nest, it knows about any other online accounts you have because google sso.... Now it has something it couldnt really capture, detailed health data that users willingly provide. This is all in support of the monster data vacuum that google has become - not about web indexing, its about people indexing, health indexing, interests, habbits all to support ads. It knows exactly what its doing.

ohazi 7y ago
> detailed health data that users willingly provide. I'm skeptical that an accerometer on your wrist and maybe an optical heartrate monitor can really provide detailed health data. Honestly, most of the "personal health monitoring" consumer device companies are selling bullshit. They don't have purpose-built devices that are capable of monitoring specific health parameters as you sleep or as you work, they have a pile of "these particular electromechanical / electro-optical sensors happen to be cheap enough and low power enough to put in a wristwatch" and are hoping that they can gain insight by throwing machine learning at the problem. In that sense, perhaps this is a perfect match, since that's what the hype-chasers at Google/X seem to love, but sometimes the best signal you can find just isn't all that useful or interesting.
- jononor 7y ago
  Maybe not detailed for many medical or health improving things. But Google does not care about that... It just need to be detailed enough for increasing their ability to map the world (see Waze, Niantic), deliver ads, and maybe things like pricing of insurance policy etc.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rednerrus 7y ago
  They do know how much you move and when you move. If I was selling health-related goods, I would really like to know who's thinking about getting healthy. Who's sticking to their goals, who are faltering. Are you up and moving around in the middle of the night. Are you having trouble sleeping. Are you stressed? All of these things could be extrapolated from the data they have. Seems valuable to me. $2B valuable, I don't know.
qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
Alphabet inc. needs to be broken up.
onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
As someone who works at Google and who used to think these things were true, I can say that most of this is simply not true. We store hardly any data about users. Far from everything we get. Of the things we store, hardly anything gets stored longer than 30 days. So, no, we do not store a constant audio stream from everything in your house for all of eternity. We don't store every website you visit in chrome for all of eternity. We don't analyze your face as you browse Hacker News from Chrome in your cellphone using your front facing camera, and store how the different parts of every page influence your emotions. I'm sure SOME company is doing all of these things. But Google is not. You need to jump through a million hoops to get permission to store anything at all! And unless there's a very clear reason why our service won't function without the data we're collecting (note this is completely different than the data potentially being valuable for something in the future, or possibly being able to add revenue) there's basically a ~0% it gets stored for longer than 30 days. Maybe some of the older products like Doubleclick and Google Web Search are grandfathered in and storing lots of questionable data. I don't know. But I doubt it. Anything built in the last few years -- again I don't really know -- but I'm pretty sure shouldn't be considered a monster data vacuum.
- tma12345 7y ago
  Throw away account... As someone who works with Google partners and partnering with Google's data, we see a lot of personal data in it. You simply might be someone that doesn't work with such data. I do and we use a lot of it and it gets very personal.
  - OnlineGladiator 7y ago
    > and it gets very personal What does this mean? Are you reading people's depressed love poems and looking at pictures of their exes?
  - hiei 7y ago
    Could you share more? Perhaps some example or products?
  - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago

ohazi 7y ago

> detailed health data that users willingly provide. I'm skeptical that an accerometer on your wrist and maybe an optical heartrate monitor can really provide detailed health data. Honestly, most of the "personal health monitoring" consumer device companies are selling bullshit. They don't have purpose-built devices that are capable of monitoring specific health parameters as you sleep or as you work, they have a pile of "these particular electromechanical / electro-optical sensors happen to be cheap enough and low power enough to put in a wristwatch" and are hoping that they can gain insight by throwing machine learning at the problem. In that sense, perhaps this is a perfect match, since that's what the hype-chasers at Google/X seem to love, but sometimes the best signal you can find just isn't all that useful or interesting.

jononor 7y ago
Maybe not detailed for many medical or health improving things. But Google does not care about that... It just need to be detailed enough for increasing their ability to map the world (see Waze, Niantic), deliver ads, and maybe things like pricing of insurance policy etc.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rednerrus 7y ago
They do know how much you move and when you move. If I was selling health-related goods, I would really like to know who's thinking about getting healthy. Who's sticking to their goals, who are faltering. Are you up and moving around in the middle of the night. Are you having trouble sleeping. Are you stressed? All of these things could be extrapolated from the data they have. Seems valuable to me. $2B valuable, I don't know.

qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago

Alphabet inc. needs to be broken up.

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago

As someone who works at Google and who used to think these things were true, I can say that most of this is simply not true. We store hardly any data about users. Far from everything we get. Of the things we store, hardly anything gets stored longer than 30 days. So, no, we do not store a constant audio stream from everything in your house for all of eternity. We don't store every website you visit in chrome for all of eternity. We don't analyze your face as you browse Hacker News from Chrome in your cellphone using your front facing camera, and store how the different parts of every page influence your emotions. I'm sure SOME company is doing all of these things. But Google is not. You need to jump through a million hoops to get permission to store anything at all! And unless there's a very clear reason why our service won't function without the data we're collecting (note this is completely different than the data potentially being valuable for something in the future, or possibly being able to add revenue) there's basically a ~0% it gets stored for longer than 30 days. Maybe some of the older products like Doubleclick and Google Web Search are grandfathered in and storing lots of questionable data. I don't know. But I doubt it. Anything built in the last few years -- again I don't really know -- but I'm pretty sure shouldn't be considered a monster data vacuum.

tma12345 7y ago
Throw away account... As someone who works with Google partners and partnering with Google's data, we see a lot of personal data in it. You simply might be someone that doesn't work with such data. I do and we use a lot of it and it gets very personal.
- OnlineGladiator 7y ago
  > and it gets very personal What does this mean? Are you reading people's depressed love poems and looking at pictures of their exes?
- hiei 7y ago
  Could you share more? Perhaps some example or products?
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago