4 ms·
Google wins bankruptcy auction for Spirit Airlines emails, chats, documents
- Taikhoom10 3mo ago[flagged]
- robocat 3mo agoUsing data from failed businesses as training data: what could go wrong?
- kevmo314 3mo agoMaybe we can help businesses fail faster
- geetee 3mo agoAh, rare data hunters.
- krackers 3mo agoref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU4ByUbDKNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU4ByUbDKNc
- ygjb 3mo agoI would love to see a rider from the courts mandating a significant third party test by privacy researchers to see if the deidentified data can be reconstructed from models post training.
- geoduck14 3mo agoThe article mentions: a 3rd party company will scrub the data amd Google will promise not to attempt to reconstruct PII from the data. That is good enough for me. If they violate their promise to the judge, the court can lay the hammer down on them
- m4rtink 3mo agoGood, they never break promises, so it should be fine. It also implies you can reconstruct personal information from the data. Perfect.
- DauntingPear7 3mo agoMaybe we can all be blessed with 2 quarters from a multi-year class action in a decade
- lazide 3mo agoDon't forget the eventual settlement for $10 worth of coupons for purchases at the company.
- gessha 3mo agoHere, you dropped this: /s
- Cider9986 3mo agoI love the /s
- squigz 3mo agoHow is the court going to ensure they stick to that promise? Or is this basically just a pinky promise?
- notabotiswear 3mo agoYes, but did they _pinky promise?_
- igregoryca 3mo agoAs someone not super familiar with bankruptcy procedure: why do they auction off exclusive access to the data? Couldn't they make more money by, say, taking the top N offers, where N is "small" (e.g., ≤5)? Or does that depress the price too much?
- olalonde 3mo agoIn theory, a buyer could always execute that strategy after the sale, so it's essentially "priced in". By keeping the auction exclusive, the seller also keeps the possibility that the data is worth more to someone as an exclusive asset.
- jacquesm 3mo agoIt's high time we get signed warrants that upon bankruptcy all data will be destroyed so it won't be used to make good either the creditors or the shareholders of the company that went under. I can't imagine any good outcome here, and change of control should result in an automatic withdrawal of any consent, no matter what assurances of privacy are given by the buyer.
- lazide 3mo agoWorth a try, but just see how hard it is to get mining companies to clean up literal physical superfund sites. How do you even prove all data was destroyed, let alone actually do it?
- pjc50 3mo ago> upon bankruptcy all data will be destroyed So, PBS should lose all their archives? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49333344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49333344
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- theodpHN 3mo agoAnyone see Google's intended use of the collected data spelled out in the "Primary Purpose for Collection and Use of Data" in the Spirit Privacy Agreement? Asking for 1.2 billion Spirit passengers. https://content.spirit.com/Shared/en-us/Documents/Privacy_Policy.pdf https://content.spirit.com/Shared/en-us/Documents/Privacy_Po...
- tough 3mo agoon twitter I read data will be fully anonymized and scrubbed for PII before handover by a third party. supposedly google intended purpose is to train LLM's for enterprise/office work etc
- tonyedgecombe 3mo agoTo train on the data from a company that went bankrupt?
- nadermx 3mo agoWhat better way to train to bankrupting a company is there?
- vineyardmike 3mo agoFor the 1.2B passengers: the transfer doesn’t contain passenger data, just internal operations data Eg. Airline code, marketing materials, pricing histories, etc Also, to answer the question: > Affiliates and Acquisitions. We may share information with any corporate affiliates (e.g., parent company, sister companies, subsidiaries, joint ventures, or other companies under common control). If another company acquires, or plans to acquire, our company, business, or our assets, we will also share information with that company, including at the negotiation stage.
- emsign 3mo agoSo Google is training AI to run businesses that go bankrupt now? That's not very smart.
- vanjajaja1 3mo ago[dead]
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- fnord77 3mo agogemini to get more profane
- paxys 3mo ago> The data does not contain any personally identifiable information, according to a court filing by PJT Partners vice president Dylan Friesner, an investment banker for Spirit. > The data will be "deidentified" — meaning that it won't be associated with individual people and the buyer agrees not to attempt to re-identify the users. Sure, 100 million emails and 500 million chats totally won’t have any mention of customers. No employee has ever shared PII on email or chat. Their redaction is guaranteed to work correctly. Nothing to see here.
- yahway 3mo agoDoesn't matter. Same as Facebook or any other data hoarder. They use the data to manipulate society. This has always been the problem with personal data as the Red Herring.
- euroderf 3mo agoUSA: Hyperdetailed electronic information about you does not belong to you. EU: Well, it sorta does, altho we're still working out the kinks.
- tenuousemphasis 3mo agoI was wondering if this is valuable for the mineable PII or for the AI training data? Maybe boyh.
- paxys 3mo agoTalking like a middle management drone from a failed corporation is perfectly on brand for Google AI.
- kittikitti 3mo agoSad that an affordable airline had to dissolve from increased fuel costs due to America and Israel's wars. Google isn't the right company to capitalize on their data but now their competitors don't have it. This is what happens with Big Tech goes unchecked and their AI can swallow an entire airline.
- lazide 3mo agoThe issue wasn't the fuel costs - it was their inability to adjust in time or effectively.
- ChrisArchitect 3mo agoIn related airline/Google AI data business, just last week: Ryanair and Google Cloud Announce Five-Year Data and AI Partnership https://www.googlecloudpresscorner.com/2026-08-12-Ryanair-and-Google-Cloud-Announce-Five-Year-Data-and-AI-Partnership https://www.googlecloudpresscorner.com/2026-08-12-Ryanair-an...
- kotaKat 3mo agoIs this just Enron Corpus 2.0? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_Corpus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_Corpus
- gib444 3mo agoData protection laws are at best grossly insufficient, at worst a lie
- metalman 3mo agotitle can be viewed as googles entire strategic planning objectives realised. "google Wins!, Bankruptcy Auction"