6 ms·

From the article: "The company says its intentions in health are unconnected with its advertising business".

obmelvin 7y ago
Exactly. There is so much money to be made from healthcare service, it is a market & revenue stream totally separate from advertising, and it can provide great value to many people. There are things one could be critical of regarding their acquisition of data, etc. but I don't think it is in Google's best interest to use the data for advertising.
- allovernow 7y ago
  Why would you trust a literal corporate mouthpiece? You think Zuckerberg cares about your privacy too? No way in hell Google isn't going to use this for advertisement. It's exactly the kind of huge free money that drives everyone else to collect data totally unrelated to their core business. Even if the intentions are benign now, there's no reason to trust they'll be so later, based on Google's track record and the typical tech mindset. Just imagine the kind of profiles you could build on people with medical data. Beyond targeted drug advertisement, medical devices, and the like, you know which people are sedentary, which play sports, who probably smokes, and I'd bet good money there are correlations between certain conditions and shopping habits, religious preference, and even political preferences. Just begging to be clustered with the latest hot neural net.
  - banads 7y ago
    >you know which people are sedentary, which play sports, who probably smokes, and I'd bet good money there are correlations between certain conditions and shopping habits, religious preference, and even political preferences. They could already do this with data from Android, Chrome, Google, Maps, or Youtube.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      But they can do it better with more accurate data, which they can get from this.
    - justinclift 7y ago
      > They could already do this with data from Android, Chrome, Google, Maps, or Youtube. Not everyone uses Google websites.
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    > No way in hell Google isn't going to use this for advertisement. There are ample ones: It's illegal, it's highly unethical, and you wouldn't be able to keep something like that a secret. > Even if the intentions are benign now, there's no reason to trust they'll be so later, based on Google's track record and the typical tech mindset. What track record?
    - austhrow743 7y ago
      >What track record? Tech company. Automation. Advertising. Do they need to be skinning puppies or something?
      - joshuamorton 7y ago
        Right so how does "Tech company. Automation. Advertising." become "Google has a track record of collecting data totally unrelated to its core business and using it to inform advertising." If there's a track record of this, you can give other examples of how Google has done that, right? Where they've gone out and collected data under the guise of doing something benign and then used it for advertisements.
        austhrow743 7y ago
        The track record is that of them being morally bankrupt. Not a track record of having applied their moral bankruptcy to this particular scenario as of yet.
        joshuamorton 7y ago
        The how does "Tech company. Automation. Advertising." Imply morally bankrupt?
        austhrow743 7y ago
        Tech company = making the world more digital. Perverting humanity. Moving us further away from our natural state. Ripping away any innate semblance of purpose we had. Automation = Removing the stand in sense of purpose people had found in the modern world. Increasing inequality. Increasing the needed level of education to be productive. Advertising = creates and reinforces wants. Makes people unhappy with what they already have. Causes them to then have to seek to be productive which is bad because of the previous two.
  - username90 7y ago
    > Even if the intentions are benign now, there's no reason to trust they'll be so later, based on Google's track record and the typical tech mindset. I have never heard of Google doing outright illegal things. They make very liberal interpretations of the law in their own favor, but patient data protection is very clear and well understood so there isn't much room to play there.
    - allovernow 7y ago
      1. How would you know? How many engineers does it really take, in a massive company with billions of dollars to waste and tens of thousands of employees, to break the law for profit in secret? 2. Do you really trust that the law is sufficiently protective? Do you believe it to be crafted for the novel dangers that come from mining aggregations of data and building individual profiles with next generation ML? 3. What stops Google from throwing it's weight around to lobby for changes to the law which allow it to make use of data in ways that laws protect against now, once it has the data? Sure, that's a lot of what ifs. But this particular scenario is dangerous because it effects all of us, and it only takes one ambitious authoritarian to turn all of this adtech fun and games into the most comprehensive and fine grained surveillance apparatus that has ever existed. Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Pol Pot; just imagine the temptation of being just one "lawful" seizure away from such power...that's what slimy adtech companies are building, they don't care and the average person doesn't understand.
  - bagacrap 7y ago
    Last I checked, Zuckerberg worked at a different company.
  - obmelvin 7y ago
    > Beyond targeted drug advertisement, medical devices, and the like, you know which people are sedentary, which play sports, who probably smokes, and I'd bet good money there are correlations between certain conditions and shopping habits, religious preference, and even political preferences. Well, I can tell you that Google's advertising profile for me would already have a pretty good idea for all of those attributes you listed based on my search history, location history, google maps usage, youtube usage, etc. The healthcare market is an ~8.5 Trillion market globally [1]. Advertising is ~ 1 trillion [2,3]. I admit that I don't know the exact quality of the data cited in these - but they do clearly demonstrate that healthcare is a huge industry. Given that Google wants another profit source besides advertising I think it just conspiratorial to suggest they would throw away the medical opportunity for some marginal advertising gains. Dragonfly leaked, employees are otherwise frustrated with certain things. If employees are talking about what you say then I'll listen to them. But you are just making senseless accusations. 1 - https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190625005862/en/11.9-Trillion-Global-Healthcare-Market-Key-Opportunities https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190625005862/en/11.... 2 - http://towersofzeyron.com/the-advertising-industry-is-now-worth-1-2-trillion-marketing-in-its-various-forms-continues-to-grow-through-mobile-content-marketing-social-platforms-and-new-digital-platforms/ http://towersofzeyron.com/the-advertising-industry-is-now-wo... 3 - https://www.statista.com/topics/990/global-advertising-market/ https://www.statista.com/topics/990/global-advertising-marke...
judge2020 7y ago
Google is really trying to diversify revenue since they know global web-based advertising regulation is coming (see YT Premium, YT TV, Google Store products, Fi), I can see this being purely a way to enter the healthcare software business.

Exactly. There is so much money to be made from healthcare service, it is a market & revenue stream totally separate from advertising, and it can provide great value to many people. There are things one could be critical of regarding their acquisition of data, etc. but I don't think it is in Google's best interest to use the data for advertising.

allovernow 7y ago
Why would you trust a literal corporate mouthpiece? You think Zuckerberg cares about your privacy too? No way in hell Google isn't going to use this for advertisement. It's exactly the kind of huge free money that drives everyone else to collect data totally unrelated to their core business. Even if the intentions are benign now, there's no reason to trust they'll be so later, based on Google's track record and the typical tech mindset. Just imagine the kind of profiles you could build on people with medical data. Beyond targeted drug advertisement, medical devices, and the like, you know which people are sedentary, which play sports, who probably smokes, and I'd bet good money there are correlations between certain conditions and shopping habits, religious preference, and even political preferences. Just begging to be clustered with the latest hot neural net.
- banads 7y ago
  >you know which people are sedentary, which play sports, who probably smokes, and I'd bet good money there are correlations between certain conditions and shopping habits, religious preference, and even political preferences. They could already do this with data from Android, Chrome, Google, Maps, or Youtube.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    But they can do it better with more accurate data, which they can get from this.
  - justinclift 7y ago
    > They could already do this with data from Android, Chrome, Google, Maps, or Youtube. Not everyone uses Google websites.
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  > No way in hell Google isn't going to use this for advertisement. There are ample ones: It's illegal, it's highly unethical, and you wouldn't be able to keep something like that a secret. > Even if the intentions are benign now, there's no reason to trust they'll be so later, based on Google's track record and the typical tech mindset. What track record?
  - austhrow743 7y ago
    >What track record? Tech company. Automation. Advertising. Do they need to be skinning puppies or something?
    - joshuamorton 7y ago
      Right so how does "Tech company. Automation. Advertising." become "Google has a track record of collecting data totally unrelated to its core business and using it to inform advertising." If there's a track record of this, you can give other examples of how Google has done that, right? Where they've gone out and collected data under the guise of doing something benign and then used it for advertisements.
      - austhrow743 7y ago
        The track record is that of them being morally bankrupt. Not a track record of having applied their moral bankruptcy to this particular scenario as of yet.
        joshuamorton 7y ago
        The how does "Tech company. Automation. Advertising." Imply morally bankrupt?
        austhrow743 7y ago
        Tech company = making the world more digital. Perverting humanity. Moving us further away from our natural state. Ripping away any innate semblance of purpose we had. Automation = Removing the stand in sense of purpose people had found in the modern world. Increasing inequality. Increasing the needed level of education to be productive. Advertising = creates and reinforces wants. Makes people unhappy with what they already have. Causes them to then have to seek to be productive which is bad because of the previous two.
- username90 7y ago
  > Even if the intentions are benign now, there's no reason to trust they'll be so later, based on Google's track record and the typical tech mindset. I have never heard of Google doing outright illegal things. They make very liberal interpretations of the law in their own favor, but patient data protection is very clear and well understood so there isn't much room to play there.
  - allovernow 7y ago
    1. How would you know? How many engineers does it really take, in a massive company with billions of dollars to waste and tens of thousands of employees, to break the law for profit in secret? 2. Do you really trust that the law is sufficiently protective? Do you believe it to be crafted for the novel dangers that come from mining aggregations of data and building individual profiles with next generation ML? 3. What stops Google from throwing it's weight around to lobby for changes to the law which allow it to make use of data in ways that laws protect against now, once it has the data? Sure, that's a lot of what ifs. But this particular scenario is dangerous because it effects all of us, and it only takes one ambitious authoritarian to turn all of this adtech fun and games into the most comprehensive and fine grained surveillance apparatus that has ever existed. Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Pol Pot; just imagine the temptation of being just one "lawful" seizure away from such power...that's what slimy adtech companies are building, they don't care and the average person doesn't understand.
- bagacrap 7y ago
  Last I checked, Zuckerberg worked at a different company.
- obmelvin 7y ago
  > Beyond targeted drug advertisement, medical devices, and the like, you know which people are sedentary, which play sports, who probably smokes, and I'd bet good money there are correlations between certain conditions and shopping habits, religious preference, and even political preferences. Well, I can tell you that Google's advertising profile for me would already have a pretty good idea for all of those attributes you listed based on my search history, location history, google maps usage, youtube usage, etc. The healthcare market is an ~8.5 Trillion market globally [1]. Advertising is ~ 1 trillion [2,3]. I admit that I don't know the exact quality of the data cited in these - but they do clearly demonstrate that healthcare is a huge industry. Given that Google wants another profit source besides advertising I think it just conspiratorial to suggest they would throw away the medical opportunity for some marginal advertising gains. Dragonfly leaked, employees are otherwise frustrated with certain things. If employees are talking about what you say then I'll listen to them. But you are just making senseless accusations. 1 - https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190625005862/en/11.9-Trillion-Global-Healthcare-Market-Key-Opportunities https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190625005862/en/11.... 2 - http://towersofzeyron.com/the-advertising-industry-is-now-worth-1-2-trillion-marketing-in-its-various-forms-continues-to-grow-through-mobile-content-marketing-social-platforms-and-new-digital-platforms/ http://towersofzeyron.com/the-advertising-industry-is-now-wo... 3 - https://www.statista.com/topics/990/global-advertising-market/ https://www.statista.com/topics/990/global-advertising-marke...

judge2020 7y ago

Google is really trying to diversify revenue since they know global web-based advertising regulation is coming (see YT Premium, YT TV, Google Store products, Fi), I can see this being purely a way to enter the healthcare software business.