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It's a cloud-based product. So processing is a core part of the value proposition - the provider (Google, Microsoft) stores a copy of the data and exposes APIs

It's a cloud-based product. So processing is a core part of the value proposition - the provider (Google, Microsoft) stores a copy of the data and exposes APIs that the frontends use to download the documents to the users' machines. The alternative is a product that is not collaborative (no online collaboration, at least) or requires customers to hire a sys admin to install on their own servers and maintain it. This isn't some nefarious plot by big tech to steal your data, it's the product people want.

qubex 4y ago
I don’t want to collaborate with anyone. I don’t want that ‘functionality’ to get in my way. I don’t want to be driven to despair in an attempt to save a document to my local storage rather than to the OneDrive or whatever it’s called by default.
- DoctorOW 4y ago
  You really don't have to clarify your needs as one person are different from a school system. I would have figured as such.
- qubex 4y ago
  I was prompted to reply by “it’s the product people want”. No, it isn’t. Not this person, at least.
- iwillbenice 4y ago
- HEmanZ 4y ago
  Congrats. Guess who does want it? Almost every large organization on the planet.
  - gsich 4y ago
    You can build it to be E2EE.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Shared documents have been utterly game-changing. I never want to go back to mailing documents and presentations around and having to merge conflicting comments together again. ADDED: And that's not even counting the fact that I can access my docs from multiple computers without worrying about shared network storage, etc.
afandian 4y ago
If the customers are going to the lengths of legally intervening in your implementation it's not the 'product people want'.
jameshart 4y ago
There’s a case for cloud apps to move to a ‘bring your own data storage’ model. Draw.io does it, letting you load and save and share files using box or Google storage on the backend. ‘But the web app running locally has access to your data and can phone home to its servers in the US or wherever’ - yeah, and so can a locally installed application.
- salawat 4y ago
  Locally installed application can be black holed. Hence why everyone fetishizes the cloud. They want the recurring revenue and your data, and you not to ask any probing questions, or getting pesky net admins getting pissy about all this data exfil from the network.
  - jameshart 4y ago
    Wanting recurring revenue is not intrinsically an evil wish is it?
makeitdouble 4y ago
You’re responding to a point that the parent isn‘t making. Enabling collaboration doesn’t mean AI training, exposing data within an organization doesn’t require MS to be scanning it, and their servers don’t need to be in the US. It makes business sense for them to do so, but isn’t a requirement per se.
- Closi 4y ago
  I think their point is the definition of "processing" would also likely cover collaboration (i.e. you could stop AI training etc but you still wouldn't be compliant)
  - kyrra 4y ago
    Agreed. When things are web hosted, there's all kinds of processing. Still. Spam filter, searching email history, even loading an email is considered processing the email. I believe both Google and Microsoft try to firewall any Enterprise or business data from their consumer lines. This means none of it will get fed into AI filters for the most part. Though I'm guessing marking things is spam still is a global thing.
    - BlueTemplar 4y ago
      Schrems 1 goes even farther than that... the issue is the potential access by the US government of the EU data through strongarming Microsoft (or other US companies), which is in violation of EU rights. There's no way around this issue while Microsoft-spawned EU companies are still part of Microsoft. I guess they could still sell open source software (to prove there are no backdoors, otherwise, after the Snowden scandal you have to assume that there are by default) that doesn't get to run on Microsoft's servers and that Microsoft doesn't provide technical support for... but how can this be a business ??
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    This looks to me to be a fairly solved problem, Gitlab can be instances you manage yourself and there is no specific limitations on what works on your self hosted ones. Microsoft provides server software for Outlook, ActiveDirectory, Sharepoint and the whole org management stack that doesn’t need Microsoft meddling with the data. Office365 shouldn’t be some wildly different software that can’t live outside of Microsoft’s full grasp.
baud147258 4y ago
> It's a cloud-based product. So processing is a core part of the value proposition not necessarily, if I choose a cloud product, it's to avoid having to manage the mail and data servers, not to have the content of those servers rifled through
- bskap 4y ago
  You don't want a spam filter in your email? Everything should go straight to inbox? And that's not even mentioning the processing they have to do to figure out whose email it is in the first place.
esperent 4y ago
> This isn't some nefarious plot by big tech to steal your data It is though. They could design it in a way that it operates on your data but they have no access to the data outside of these strictly defined operations. If that was a priority to solve, it would be solved. > it's the product people want. These two things are not mutually exclusive. Despite which, this is not true. There are no non cloud options if MS Office anymore, or of the Adobe Creative Suite. This stuff has been forced on us, often by work, and then the other options were removed. Hence the nefarious plot thing.
- dayvid 4y ago
  To my knowledge, they make money off of selling SAAS software here and not ads. It being cloud based is done to get recurring revenue. Office and Photoshop hit a point where it will satisfy vast majority of customer needs a while back. That's when the recurring payment model was put in place. To deal with piracy and paid customers not updating their software for years.
  - boringg 4y ago
    That might be the case now but who knows where the future takes them. A smart legal council once told me even though you have a great relationship with the organization right now the contract you sign is binding and when ownership changes and revenues needs are different you really don't know who you are up against and what they will do with your data. Not that we have any real power except to try and use another product...
    - dayvid 4y ago
      A lot of their money is from enterprise contracts. These businesses have strict privacy requirements and would immediately end their Microsoft contracts or sue the company is they were monetizing their data. Let alone businesses with regulated privacy laws like medical or fintech. No business would touch them with a 10 foot pole. For Windows Home or other free/bundle solutions, it's a different situation. But not for enterprise or pro/higher-tier customers.
  - 4y ago
connicpu 4y ago
All I have to do is skim any privacy policy these days and virtually every cloud service has written theirs in a way that I can pretty much guarantee they're selling my data to someone. I picked up electrical engineering as a hobby because I want a smart home but there isn't a single IoT device on the market that I can trust won't phone home to sell my data. On the bright side I've found soldering isn't too hard and prototype size batches of PCBs are cheaper than ever.
- frisco 4y ago
  For the prosumer smart home, I highly recommend going with the low end industrial automation (ie https://automationdirect.com https://automationdirect.com, https://findernet.com https://findernet.com, etc) rather than “IoT” brands. Way more powerful, everything is interoperable, and the business model is much simpler. No phoning home.
  - connicpu 4y ago
    If I wanted something that was more akin to putting legos together that's definitely the way, but I found it quite enjoyable to go down to the low level of electrical design, and any application that can be accomplished by flipping a switch can be made wifi-compatible with an ESP32 module and a relay or TRIAC circuit (TRIACs are nice because they don't have a lifetime rated in switching cycles). I don't have to worry about my microcontroller phoning home if I wrote the firmware it's flashed with!
jesterson 4y ago
> It's a cloud-based product It was done so to be a data farming monster. There is absolutely no justification why word processor needs to be a "cloud product"

qubex 4y ago

I don’t want to collaborate with anyone. I don’t want that ‘functionality’ to get in my way. I don’t want to be driven to despair in an attempt to save a document to my local storage rather than to the OneDrive or whatever it’s called by default.

DoctorOW 4y ago
You really don't have to clarify your needs as one person are different from a school system. I would have figured as such.
qubex 4y ago
I was prompted to reply by “it’s the product people want”. No, it isn’t. Not this person, at least.
iwillbenice 4y ago
HEmanZ 4y ago
Congrats. Guess who does want it? Almost every large organization on the planet.
- gsich 4y ago
  You can build it to be E2EE.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Shared documents have been utterly game-changing. I never want to go back to mailing documents and presentations around and having to merge conflicting comments together again. ADDED: And that's not even counting the fact that I can access my docs from multiple computers without worrying about shared network storage, etc.

afandian 4y ago

If the customers are going to the lengths of legally intervening in your implementation it's not the 'product people want'.

jameshart 4y ago

There’s a case for cloud apps to move to a ‘bring your own data storage’ model. Draw.io does it, letting you load and save and share files using box or Google storage on the backend. ‘But the web app running locally has access to your data and can phone home to its servers in the US or wherever’ - yeah, and so can a locally installed application.

salawat 4y ago
Locally installed application can be black holed. Hence why everyone fetishizes the cloud. They want the recurring revenue and your data, and you not to ask any probing questions, or getting pesky net admins getting pissy about all this data exfil from the network.
- jameshart 4y ago
  Wanting recurring revenue is not intrinsically an evil wish is it?

makeitdouble 4y ago

You’re responding to a point that the parent isn‘t making. Enabling collaboration doesn’t mean AI training, exposing data within an organization doesn’t require MS to be scanning it, and their servers don’t need to be in the US. It makes business sense for them to do so, but isn’t a requirement per se.

Closi 4y ago
I think their point is the definition of "processing" would also likely cover collaboration (i.e. you could stop AI training etc but you still wouldn't be compliant)
- kyrra 4y ago
  Agreed. When things are web hosted, there's all kinds of processing. Still. Spam filter, searching email history, even loading an email is considered processing the email. I believe both Google and Microsoft try to firewall any Enterprise or business data from their consumer lines. This means none of it will get fed into AI filters for the most part. Though I'm guessing marking things is spam still is a global thing.
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    Schrems 1 goes even farther than that... the issue is the potential access by the US government of the EU data through strongarming Microsoft (or other US companies), which is in violation of EU rights. There's no way around this issue while Microsoft-spawned EU companies are still part of Microsoft. I guess they could still sell open source software (to prove there are no backdoors, otherwise, after the Snowden scandal you have to assume that there are by default) that doesn't get to run on Microsoft's servers and that Microsoft doesn't provide technical support for... but how can this be a business ??
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  This looks to me to be a fairly solved problem, Gitlab can be instances you manage yourself and there is no specific limitations on what works on your self hosted ones. Microsoft provides server software for Outlook, ActiveDirectory, Sharepoint and the whole org management stack that doesn’t need Microsoft meddling with the data. Office365 shouldn’t be some wildly different software that can’t live outside of Microsoft’s full grasp.

baud147258 4y ago

> It's a cloud-based product. So processing is a core part of the value proposition not necessarily, if I choose a cloud product, it's to avoid having to manage the mail and data servers, not to have the content of those servers rifled through

bskap 4y ago
You don't want a spam filter in your email? Everything should go straight to inbox? And that's not even mentioning the processing they have to do to figure out whose email it is in the first place.

esperent 4y ago

> This isn't some nefarious plot by big tech to steal your data It is though. They could design it in a way that it operates on your data but they have no access to the data outside of these strictly defined operations. If that was a priority to solve, it would be solved. > it's the product people want. These two things are not mutually exclusive. Despite which, this is not true. There are no non cloud options if MS Office anymore, or of the Adobe Creative Suite. This stuff has been forced on us, often by work, and then the other options were removed. Hence the nefarious plot thing.

dayvid 4y ago
To my knowledge, they make money off of selling SAAS software here and not ads. It being cloud based is done to get recurring revenue. Office and Photoshop hit a point where it will satisfy vast majority of customer needs a while back. That's when the recurring payment model was put in place. To deal with piracy and paid customers not updating their software for years.
- boringg 4y ago
  That might be the case now but who knows where the future takes them. A smart legal council once told me even though you have a great relationship with the organization right now the contract you sign is binding and when ownership changes and revenues needs are different you really don't know who you are up against and what they will do with your data. Not that we have any real power except to try and use another product...
  - dayvid 4y ago
    A lot of their money is from enterprise contracts. These businesses have strict privacy requirements and would immediately end their Microsoft contracts or sue the company is they were monetizing their data. Let alone businesses with regulated privacy laws like medical or fintech. No business would touch them with a 10 foot pole. For Windows Home or other free/bundle solutions, it's a different situation. But not for enterprise or pro/higher-tier customers.
- 4y ago

connicpu 4y ago

All I have to do is skim any privacy policy these days and virtually every cloud service has written theirs in a way that I can pretty much guarantee they're selling my data to someone. I picked up electrical engineering as a hobby because I want a smart home but there isn't a single IoT device on the market that I can trust won't phone home to sell my data. On the bright side I've found soldering isn't too hard and prototype size batches of PCBs are cheaper than ever.

frisco 4y ago
For the prosumer smart home, I highly recommend going with the low end industrial automation (ie https://automationdirect.com https://automationdirect.com, https://findernet.com https://findernet.com, etc) rather than “IoT” brands. Way more powerful, everything is interoperable, and the business model is much simpler. No phoning home.
- connicpu 4y ago
  If I wanted something that was more akin to putting legos together that's definitely the way, but I found it quite enjoyable to go down to the low level of electrical design, and any application that can be accomplished by flipping a switch can be made wifi-compatible with an ESP32 module and a relay or TRIAC circuit (TRIACs are nice because they don't have a lifetime rated in switching cycles). I don't have to worry about my microcontroller phoning home if I wrote the firmware it's flashed with!

jesterson 4y ago

> It's a cloud-based product It was done so to be a data farming monster. There is absolutely no justification why word processor needs to be a "cloud product"