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I believe the argument is that having all your information in one service (Google, Facebook,..) is like having all your eggs in one basket. Then, if the compan

I believe the argument is that having all your information in one service (Google, Facebook,..) is like having all your eggs in one basket. Then, if the company decides to sell your information, lose it, etc., it's too easy, and you're left empty-handed. However, I think that if that 1 service makes it possible for you to backup all your information and allows you to remove all the information from their service if you want to, then it shouldn't be a problem... but I might be underplaying their argument...

jemfinch 15y ago
> However, I think that if that 1 service makes it possible for you to backup all your information and allows you to remove all the information from their service if you want to, then it shouldn't be a problem... Something like Google's Data Liberation Front? http://www.dataliberation.org/ http://www.dataliberation.org/ I put all my eggs in one basket every time I take the family to the grocery store. It's unclear to me why storing all my information with Google is any worse than piling my wife and kids into the Odyssey.
- boredguy8 15y ago
  When you drive, your goals and the goals of everyone else on the road are roughly aligned insofar as you all want to travel from one place to another place quickly and safely. There are pretty rough consequences for those whose goals aren't similarly aligned. So yes, you could be killed by someone else driving drunk, but it's relatively unlikely. Google's goals and mine aren't aligned at all, except instrumentally. So Google cares about my privacy up to and until it costs them less to not care than to care. I'm fully in the Google camp, but let's be honest about the fact that we've made a deal with some supernatural being. We just hope it turns out not to be the devil.
  - cafard 15y ago
    Or "earns them more not to care".
- falling 15y ago
  Facebook lets you download your data as well: https://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=download https://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=download Just wanted to balance the “Facebook evil / Google not evil” diatribe, as when discussing these topics only Google is ever mentioned.
  - jemfinch 15y ago
    How long has this existed? I don't recall seeing such an option when I deactivated my account almost a year ago, and it might be worth trying to reactivate my account just to get this data.
    - falling 15y ago
      Most of the news articles talking about this are from early October 2010, about the same time the Google Data Liberation Front was created.
  - patrickaljord 15y ago
    Google allows you to download your data, which includes the emails of your contacts, your icals etc. In Facebook you get your list of contacts consisting in a list of full names in pure text, no emails. The only way to get in contact with them is to connect with them on facebook, making the data completely useless. With Google, you can export everything and use it somewhere else and still be in touch with your contacts, calendars etc _without_ ever using google again. Big difference.
    - falling 15y ago
      Man, you really want Facebook to be evil, do you? Google gives you the email addresses because you provided them with that data, it's yours to begin with. Facebook will give you the email addresses, but only for the users that allowed it to share that data with you. Will Google give you the email addresses of your Google+ contacts, if they decided not to share their address with you? I doubt it, and rightly so. “Data Liberation” means that you own your data, not that using some social network gives you the right to be able to communicate with people outside of that service. If you want to contact them outside of Facebook, ask them their email. It's your problem, not Facebook's. Your argument is like saying that Google should give me my Gmail contacts' phone numbers, so I can contact them without using email.
- biturd 15y ago
  Imagine if google died. You have your email with them. Now you can't login to any other service that you have forgotten your login and password to, because you don't have access to email. Say you use Google Apps For Domains. Thinking it is safer because you own your own domain. Arguments that you don't really own that domain aside, if google dies, you won't be able to transfer that domain away from google. Email is the backbone of an approval system for just about everything. I think you can pretty safely put all your eggs in one basket, as long as you take one egg out, that being your email access. At the very least, forward all inbound emails to some other service so you have access to those in an emergency. Ideally, we would all have our own mini email servers that we control and manage. However, managing an email server is perhaps one of the harder chunks of tech to manage. From anti-spam to just configuring all the pieces, it is much more than most are willing to do.

jemfinch 15y ago

> However, I think that if that 1 service makes it possible for you to backup all your information and allows you to remove all the information from their service if you want to, then it shouldn't be a problem... Something like Google's Data Liberation Front? http://www.dataliberation.org/ http://www.dataliberation.org/ I put all my eggs in one basket every time I take the family to the grocery store. It's unclear to me why storing all my information with Google is any worse than piling my wife and kids into the Odyssey.

boredguy8 15y ago
When you drive, your goals and the goals of everyone else on the road are roughly aligned insofar as you all want to travel from one place to another place quickly and safely. There are pretty rough consequences for those whose goals aren't similarly aligned. So yes, you could be killed by someone else driving drunk, but it's relatively unlikely. Google's goals and mine aren't aligned at all, except instrumentally. So Google cares about my privacy up to and until it costs them less to not care than to care. I'm fully in the Google camp, but let's be honest about the fact that we've made a deal with some supernatural being. We just hope it turns out not to be the devil.
- cafard 15y ago
  Or "earns them more not to care".
falling 15y ago
Facebook lets you download your data as well: https://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=download https://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=download Just wanted to balance the “Facebook evil / Google not evil” diatribe, as when discussing these topics only Google is ever mentioned.
- jemfinch 15y ago
  How long has this existed? I don't recall seeing such an option when I deactivated my account almost a year ago, and it might be worth trying to reactivate my account just to get this data.
  - falling 15y ago
    Most of the news articles talking about this are from early October 2010, about the same time the Google Data Liberation Front was created.
- patrickaljord 15y ago
  Google allows you to download your data, which includes the emails of your contacts, your icals etc. In Facebook you get your list of contacts consisting in a list of full names in pure text, no emails. The only way to get in contact with them is to connect with them on facebook, making the data completely useless. With Google, you can export everything and use it somewhere else and still be in touch with your contacts, calendars etc _without_ ever using google again. Big difference.
  - falling 15y ago
    Man, you really want Facebook to be evil, do you? Google gives you the email addresses because you provided them with that data, it's yours to begin with. Facebook will give you the email addresses, but only for the users that allowed it to share that data with you. Will Google give you the email addresses of your Google+ contacts, if they decided not to share their address with you? I doubt it, and rightly so. “Data Liberation” means that you own your data, not that using some social network gives you the right to be able to communicate with people outside of that service. If you want to contact them outside of Facebook, ask them their email. It's your problem, not Facebook's. Your argument is like saying that Google should give me my Gmail contacts' phone numbers, so I can contact them without using email.
biturd 15y ago
Imagine if google died. You have your email with them. Now you can't login to any other service that you have forgotten your login and password to, because you don't have access to email. Say you use Google Apps For Domains. Thinking it is safer because you own your own domain. Arguments that you don't really own that domain aside, if google dies, you won't be able to transfer that domain away from google. Email is the backbone of an approval system for just about everything. I think you can pretty safely put all your eggs in one basket, as long as you take one egg out, that being your email access. At the very least, forward all inbound emails to some other service so you have access to those in an emergency. Ideally, we would all have our own mini email servers that we control and manage. However, managing an email server is perhaps one of the harder chunks of tech to manage. From anti-spam to just configuring all the pieces, it is much more than most are willing to do.