4 ms·

Sensationalist.

bprater 15y ago
Is it? Sounds like a strong privacy argument to me. Especially if Silk doesn't offer an opt-out. There will be wayyy too much useful data in Amazon's lap for them to simply ignore it.
- ErrantX 15y ago
  Apparently it does offer an opt out. Which is nice.
- jodrellblank 15y ago
  Especially if Silk doesn't offer an opt-out Which it does. "Fortunately Amazon will support an "off-cloud" mode for Silk. This lets users opt-out of the benefits of using EC2 while retaining the traditional privacy benefits of connecting directly to remote web sites." - http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/09/28/amazon-kindle-fires-silk-browser-sounds-privacy-alarm-bells/ http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/09/28/amazon-kindle-fir...
- joezydeco 15y ago
  Is there a point where even "anonymized" data can be mined and recombined into something that is used to personalize and sell things better?
  - angelbob 15y ago
    Absolutely. Even if you only know what people are doing/buying in aggregate, that's still very valuable. And you can still correlate between various anonymized streams of data if you know how they correlate -- i.e. 32-year-old male manga fans are more likely to buy Pokemon and Pocky than average. Amazon already gets (and uses, vigorously) a lot of this kind of data from Amazon.com, but I'll bet they're salivating at the idea of getting to cross-compare against all the non-Amazon.com data on the same topics. If they're not, they should be.
tmcw 15y ago
Yep, not much logic in this article. 'All of this on Google's dime'? ZNope, it's all on Amazon's dime, server-wise, and there's very little association between this supposed web-crawling effort and Android.
- mechanical_fish 15y ago
  I think you're misinterpreting the original paragraph, which is admittedly quite terse, even telegraphic. Read the lines that follow: they can intermediate user click through on Google search results so Google doesn’t see the actual user behavior. Google’s whole play of promoting Android in order to aggregate user behavior patterns to sell to advertisers is completely subverted by Amazon’s intermediation. Google's business model is to spend a metric ton of money on servers and software in order to deliver a better search engine than anyone else. They do so in order to attract users. Part of the payoff is that Google gets detailed data on user behavior -- what they search for, what they click on -- and uses that to increase their value to advertisers. Well, now Amazon has a brand-new potential business model: They've put a man in the middle between the customer and Google. They serve the customer the search results that Google is paying to generate, and they capture all the same data about customer behavior that Google gets. To the extent that Google's tracking data has any value, Amazon has just acquired that value, all in exchange for merely proxying a search engine that Google builds and maintains "on Google's dime". Of course, any browser vendor could do the same. But if Apple built a phone-home feature into Safari that uploaded your clickstream (including, perhaps, the decrypted end of your SSL connections?) directly to Apple headquarters they would be roasted alive -- rhetorically, anyway -- by every geek on earth. Presumably we should give the same scrutiny to this move by Amazon.

Sensationalist.

Is it? Sounds like a strong privacy argument to me. Especially if Silk doesn't offer an opt-out. There will be wayyy too much useful data in Amazon's lap for them to simply ignore it.

ErrantX 15y ago
Apparently it does offer an opt out. Which is nice.
jodrellblank 15y ago
Especially if Silk doesn't offer an opt-out Which it does. "Fortunately Amazon will support an "off-cloud" mode for Silk. This lets users opt-out of the benefits of using EC2 while retaining the traditional privacy benefits of connecting directly to remote web sites." - http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/09/28/amazon-kindle-fires-silk-browser-sounds-privacy-alarm-bells/ http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/09/28/amazon-kindle-fir...
joezydeco 15y ago
Is there a point where even "anonymized" data can be mined and recombined into something that is used to personalize and sell things better?
- angelbob 15y ago
  Absolutely. Even if you only know what people are doing/buying in aggregate, that's still very valuable. And you can still correlate between various anonymized streams of data if you know how they correlate -- i.e. 32-year-old male manga fans are more likely to buy Pokemon and Pocky than average. Amazon already gets (and uses, vigorously) a lot of this kind of data from Amazon.com, but I'll bet they're salivating at the idea of getting to cross-compare against all the non-Amazon.com data on the same topics. If they're not, they should be.

tmcw 15y ago

Yep, not much logic in this article. 'All of this on Google's dime'? ZNope, it's all on Amazon's dime, server-wise, and there's very little association between this supposed web-crawling effort and Android.

mechanical_fish 15y ago
I think you're misinterpreting the original paragraph, which is admittedly quite terse, even telegraphic. Read the lines that follow: they can intermediate user click through on Google search results so Google doesn’t see the actual user behavior. Google’s whole play of promoting Android in order to aggregate user behavior patterns to sell to advertisers is completely subverted by Amazon’s intermediation. Google's business model is to spend a metric ton of money on servers and software in order to deliver a better search engine than anyone else. They do so in order to attract users. Part of the payoff is that Google gets detailed data on user behavior -- what they search for, what they click on -- and uses that to increase their value to advertisers. Well, now Amazon has a brand-new potential business model: They've put a man in the middle between the customer and Google. They serve the customer the search results that Google is paying to generate, and they capture all the same data about customer behavior that Google gets. To the extent that Google's tracking data has any value, Amazon has just acquired that value, all in exchange for merely proxying a search engine that Google builds and maintains "on Google's dime". Of course, any browser vendor could do the same. But if Apple built a phone-home feature into Safari that uploaded your clickstream (including, perhaps, the decrypted end of your SSL connections?) directly to Apple headquarters they would be roasted alive -- rhetorically, anyway -- by every geek on earth. Presumably we should give the same scrutiny to this move by Amazon.