6 ms·

> People really need to understand that Google is a garbage company that can't be relied on for anything. Normally the response to this is, yes, it sucks, but

by pdonis 3y ago

> People really need to understand that Google is a garbage company that can't be relied on for anything. Normally the response to this is, yes, it sucks, but you're not paying Google to host your data. However, it looks like this journalist did pay Google to host his data. So this immediately puts it in a worse category.

number6 3y ago
> Normally the response to this is, yes, it sucks, but you're not paying Google to host your data. You are not paying the competition either; so you somewhat paying Google. It's not a direct payment but indirect support
- pdonis 3y ago
  > You are not paying the competition either Competition for what? Here we're talking about data hosting. There are plenty of companies that will host huge amounts of data for reasonable prices. And unlike Google, they actually have reasonable terms of service and customer support.
  - number6 3y ago
    And you are not paying them, not even the reasonable price, because Google flips giving it away for "free" - so the competition doesn't get any money and Google doesn't have any liability whatsoever... Win-win for Google
smhenderson 3y ago
That whole "you're not paying"'thing is really a straw man at this point too. When Google was young and eager to be a good netizen I'd have agreed with that and said it was all part of helping to make the web better. But they've been entrenched for years now, completely dominate so many aspects of the web and get plenty of value out of even their free users. Given their size and stranglehold on just about everything, pulling an "oops, sorry, I guess you get what you pay for" is just ludicrous at this point. And sorry if it seems like I'm arguing directly with you, that's not my intention. But I see this a lot and have gone from saying it myself to vehemently disagreeing with it over the last decade or so.
- pdonis 3y ago
  Of course Google gets value out of free users--that's a huge piece of their business model. And of course if Google had actually kept to their original "don't be evil" model, they wouldn't routinely screw over users the way they do. However, as you note, they have been entrenched for years now, and it has been obvious for that same amount of time that they have long since dropped "don't be evil". So while it certainly sucks that they do the things they do, acting surprised when it happens is not a reasonable position at this point. Anyone who expects Google to honor any kind of commitment is simply asking for trouble. I don't trust them for anything. And if widespread realization of that fact gets people to stop using Google services, so much the better: maybe that would actually get their attention.
  - toastercat 3y ago
    The average non-tech savvy person doesn't really have an option than to get screwed over then. Assuming you have an Android phone, it's practically required to have a Google account; many apps just flat out do not work without Google Play Services or without signing in with your Gmail account. Yes, I know about microG, Graphene, F-Droid and the like, but the average person is not going to flash their phone. They will inevitably hit a wall that says "you need to login with Google," create a Google account, and won't ask questions. Just as an example, my mother-in-law couldn't find her contacts when she bought a new phone. Why? Because she was unknowingly saving her contacts to a Google account she forgot she made.
    - pdonis 3y ago
      > Assuming you have an Android phone, it's practically required to have a Google account To the extent this is true, it's not just Google, it's also the phone manufacturers and service providers (like Verizon).
    - lupusreal 3y ago
      You can use apps from F-Droid without flashing your phone. The only apps I have from the playstore are apps for a few financial institutions, otherwise it's all F-Droid. And you don't need to be hackerman to do this, I told my retired parents "you should check out F-Droid" and they did. Now they recommend F-Droid apps to me.
wayfinder 3y ago
Google just spends millions of dollars building a product then dumps its own baby on the streets. Then goes and makes new babies.
bryanrasmussen 3y ago
>but you're not paying Google to host your data. ok but a farmer that throws their cows down a ditch is arguably much worse than one that milks them.
bcrosby95 3y ago
It's always been a garage argument. If someone is offering free food, and it gives you food poisoning, on purpose, you don't say "well it was free".
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pdonis 3y ago
  > If someone is offering free food, and it gives you food poisoning That's not a suitable analogy for users of Google's free services. A suitable analogy would be, someone is offering free food, but (a) its quality sucks, and (b) they arbitrarily withdraw it from a significant number of people for no good reason. Yes, that's unpleasant, but "well it was free" is a suitable response in that case. The issue in this particular case, though, is that the journalist was using paid Google services--which is a very different situation.
sertbdfgbnfgsd 3y ago
> but you're not paying Google to host your data. Funny, because they never seen to have problems hosting the advertising/surveillance data they collect on me. They never went "sorry we can't track you any more for free, will you type in you card number so we can keep surveilling you?"
- ivalm 3y ago
  They don’t track you for free. Advertisers pay. They don’t have to store data if no one pays. This of course in no way justifies the journalist losing his data.
  - sertbdfgbnfgsd 3y ago
    The advertisers don't pay for google storing my data. The advertisers pay for ads displayed and ads clicked. How google does that is an implementation detail. Google does that by storing my data, many kinds of my data. You making the distinction between data that "the user knows and understands" versus data that "is obscure to the user but advertisers care about" is a matter of marketing, in that as the former is easier to charge the user for. My point is that the argument of "you're not paying for storing data X therefore fuck you" is a silly one, because you're also not paying for storing data Y, and neither are the advertisers.
    - da_chicken 3y ago
      > The advertisers don't pay for google storing my data. The advertisers pay for ads displayed and ads clicked. That's like saying you don't pay the restaurant for the chef, you pay the restaurant for the food. It's a level of semantics that rises to being simply disingenuous. It's a restaurant, not a grocery.
      - sertbdfgbnfgsd 3y ago
        No, it's not semantics, and it shows that you have no clue what you're talking about. You can sell ads without targeting. In fact you can even sell ads without users. Source: I worked years buying and selling online ads.
matkoniecz 3y ago
> but you're not paying Google to host your data. My organisation (OpenStreetMap) is paying Google to host our emails. They silently delete random ones, they never arrive at inbox. (we are preparing migration to competing provider) Paying does not help.
- shrimpx 3y ago
  Which provider, if you don’t mind me asking?
  - matkoniecz 3y ago
    mailbox.org (from reading ops issue)
- pdonis 3y ago
  > Paying does not help. As I pointed out in the very next sentence of my previous post, yes, in this particular case the journalist was paying.
  - matkoniecz 3y ago
    Yes, and I wanted to give another example that it does not help.

by pdonis 3y ago

number6 3y ago

> Normally the response to this is, yes, it sucks, but you're not paying Google to host your data. You are not paying the competition either; so you somewhat paying Google. It's not a direct payment but indirect support

pdonis 3y ago
> You are not paying the competition either Competition for what? Here we're talking about data hosting. There are plenty of companies that will host huge amounts of data for reasonable prices. And unlike Google, they actually have reasonable terms of service and customer support.
- number6 3y ago
  And you are not paying them, not even the reasonable price, because Google flips giving it away for "free" - so the competition doesn't get any money and Google doesn't have any liability whatsoever... Win-win for Google

smhenderson 3y ago

That whole "you're not paying"'thing is really a straw man at this point too. When Google was young and eager to be a good netizen I'd have agreed with that and said it was all part of helping to make the web better. But they've been entrenched for years now, completely dominate so many aspects of the web and get plenty of value out of even their free users. Given their size and stranglehold on just about everything, pulling an "oops, sorry, I guess you get what you pay for" is just ludicrous at this point. And sorry if it seems like I'm arguing directly with you, that's not my intention. But I see this a lot and have gone from saying it myself to vehemently disagreeing with it over the last decade or so.

pdonis 3y ago
Of course Google gets value out of free users--that's a huge piece of their business model. And of course if Google had actually kept to their original "don't be evil" model, they wouldn't routinely screw over users the way they do. However, as you note, they have been entrenched for years now, and it has been obvious for that same amount of time that they have long since dropped "don't be evil". So while it certainly sucks that they do the things they do, acting surprised when it happens is not a reasonable position at this point. Anyone who expects Google to honor any kind of commitment is simply asking for trouble. I don't trust them for anything. And if widespread realization of that fact gets people to stop using Google services, so much the better: maybe that would actually get their attention.
- toastercat 3y ago
  The average non-tech savvy person doesn't really have an option than to get screwed over then. Assuming you have an Android phone, it's practically required to have a Google account; many apps just flat out do not work without Google Play Services or without signing in with your Gmail account. Yes, I know about microG, Graphene, F-Droid and the like, but the average person is not going to flash their phone. They will inevitably hit a wall that says "you need to login with Google," create a Google account, and won't ask questions. Just as an example, my mother-in-law couldn't find her contacts when she bought a new phone. Why? Because she was unknowingly saving her contacts to a Google account she forgot she made.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > Assuming you have an Android phone, it's practically required to have a Google account To the extent this is true, it's not just Google, it's also the phone manufacturers and service providers (like Verizon).
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    You can use apps from F-Droid without flashing your phone. The only apps I have from the playstore are apps for a few financial institutions, otherwise it's all F-Droid. And you don't need to be hackerman to do this, I told my retired parents "you should check out F-Droid" and they did. Now they recommend F-Droid apps to me.

wayfinder 3y ago

Google just spends millions of dollars building a product then dumps its own baby on the streets. Then goes and makes new babies.

bryanrasmussen 3y ago

>but you're not paying Google to host your data. ok but a farmer that throws their cows down a ditch is arguably much worse than one that milks them.

bcrosby95 3y ago

It's always been a garage argument. If someone is offering free food, and it gives you food poisoning, on purpose, you don't say "well it was free".

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pdonis 3y ago
> If someone is offering free food, and it gives you food poisoning That's not a suitable analogy for users of Google's free services. A suitable analogy would be, someone is offering free food, but (a) its quality sucks, and (b) they arbitrarily withdraw it from a significant number of people for no good reason. Yes, that's unpleasant, but "well it was free" is a suitable response in that case. The issue in this particular case, though, is that the journalist was using paid Google services--which is a very different situation.

sertbdfgbnfgsd 3y ago

> but you're not paying Google to host your data. Funny, because they never seen to have problems hosting the advertising/surveillance data they collect on me. They never went "sorry we can't track you any more for free, will you type in you card number so we can keep surveilling you?"

ivalm 3y ago
They don’t track you for free. Advertisers pay. They don’t have to store data if no one pays. This of course in no way justifies the journalist losing his data.
- sertbdfgbnfgsd 3y ago
  The advertisers don't pay for google storing my data. The advertisers pay for ads displayed and ads clicked. How google does that is an implementation detail. Google does that by storing my data, many kinds of my data. You making the distinction between data that "the user knows and understands" versus data that "is obscure to the user but advertisers care about" is a matter of marketing, in that as the former is easier to charge the user for. My point is that the argument of "you're not paying for storing data X therefore fuck you" is a silly one, because you're also not paying for storing data Y, and neither are the advertisers.
  - da_chicken 3y ago
    > The advertisers don't pay for google storing my data. The advertisers pay for ads displayed and ads clicked. That's like saying you don't pay the restaurant for the chef, you pay the restaurant for the food. It's a level of semantics that rises to being simply disingenuous. It's a restaurant, not a grocery.
    - sertbdfgbnfgsd 3y ago
      No, it's not semantics, and it shows that you have no clue what you're talking about. You can sell ads without targeting. In fact you can even sell ads without users. Source: I worked years buying and selling online ads.

matkoniecz 3y ago

> but you're not paying Google to host your data. My organisation (OpenStreetMap) is paying Google to host our emails. They silently delete random ones, they never arrive at inbox. (we are preparing migration to competing provider) Paying does not help.

shrimpx 3y ago
Which provider, if you don’t mind me asking?
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  mailbox.org (from reading ops issue)
pdonis 3y ago
> Paying does not help. As I pointed out in the very next sentence of my previous post, yes, in this particular case the journalist was paying.
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  Yes, and I wanted to give another example that it does not help.