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Google could lead by example here - perhaps by letting people download a reliable, usable copy of the data they're making 70 billion dollars a year from. But th

Google could lead by example here - perhaps by letting people download a reliable, usable copy of the data they're making 70 billion dollars a year from. But they won't even do that. https://beepb00p.xyz/takeout-data-gone.html https://beepb00p.xyz/takeout-data-gone.html

zozbot234 7y ago
That blogpost is complaining that Google isn't keeping around as much data as OP would like. I mean, seriously? Damned if you do, damned if you don't?
- jborichevskiy 7y ago
  Let's be real; it's not like your data is also purged from their predictive models when it's no longer available in Takeout. They'll still be using it for profit. The least they can do is let you download a copy of it.
  - nl 7y ago
    I'd be surprised if behavioural data over a two years old is useful for any predictive models, and I expect they would remove it from their models to avoid spurious correlations.
  - svat 7y ago
    Yes your data is purged when you delete it from your activity (https://myactivity.google.com/ https://myactivity.google.com/) (not instantly because there are many systems involved, but within a strict deadline). This is taken seriously, and there are teams at Google making sure this happens. (Not sure how much is public, but some details in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19809259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19809259) (Note that anonymized data, such as aggregate data that cannot possibly be used to identify individual users, cannot be deleted this way: e.g. (say) the number of YouTube views for "Despacito" (if you had watched it) will not decrease by 1 when you delete your activity, because that number was never associated with you in the first place.) If something used to be in your Takeout data but is no longer there, that's most likely because Google no longer has that data about you.
    - jborichevskiy 7y ago
      Well, today I learned. Thanks for the thorough explanation.
nl 7y ago
The takeout data is the data they have. Complaining about that seems a very strange thing to make into an issue.

zozbot234 7y ago

That blogpost is complaining that Google isn't keeping around as much data as OP would like. I mean, seriously? Damned if you do, damned if you don't?

jborichevskiy 7y ago
Let's be real; it's not like your data is also purged from their predictive models when it's no longer available in Takeout. They'll still be using it for profit. The least they can do is let you download a copy of it.
- nl 7y ago
  I'd be surprised if behavioural data over a two years old is useful for any predictive models, and I expect they would remove it from their models to avoid spurious correlations.
- svat 7y ago
  Yes your data is purged when you delete it from your activity (https://myactivity.google.com/ https://myactivity.google.com/) (not instantly because there are many systems involved, but within a strict deadline). This is taken seriously, and there are teams at Google making sure this happens. (Not sure how much is public, but some details in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19809259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19809259) (Note that anonymized data, such as aggregate data that cannot possibly be used to identify individual users, cannot be deleted this way: e.g. (say) the number of YouTube views for "Despacito" (if you had watched it) will not decrease by 1 when you delete your activity, because that number was never associated with you in the first place.) If something used to be in your Takeout data but is no longer there, that's most likely because Google no longer has that data about you.
  - jborichevskiy 7y ago
    Well, today I learned. Thanks for the thorough explanation.

nl 7y ago

The takeout data is the data they have. Complaining about that seems a very strange thing to make into an issue.