5 ms·

Google could definitly still sell ads (it doesn't need to give private data to third party to do that).

by tonfa 13y ago

gaius 13y ago
Sure. But if it did, it could sell more ads. Everything Google does is about ad sales. Self driving cars? What are you going to do when your car does the driving for you? Consume media of course, with ads all over it! Etc, etc. Which is not a good or a bad thing in and of itself, it's what they do, like McDonald's sell hamburgers. The question you must ask yourself is do you want Big Mac and Fries for every meal?
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Everything Google does is about ad sales. Interesting contention. Could you explain exactly how paid web services that do not embed advertising that Google provides (paid Google Apps, and backend services like App Engine, Computer Engine, Cloud SQL, Cloud Datastore, etc.) are "about ad sales" rather than about leveraging Google's core technical competencies in search, cloud storage, and web services to generate non-advertising revenue streams?
  - gaius 13y ago
    Sure. These things are about getting new and interesting companies to build on Google's infrastructure. Then when the time comes to acquire them and monetize them through advertising, all the integration is already done. Interestingly I signed up for the trial of Google App Engine. The only thing they wanted to approve me was for me to enter my GMail password. In other words, they'd already scanned my email and decided if I was a good candidate. Worrying, no?
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Sure. These things are about getting new and interesting companies to build on Google's infrastructure. Then when the time comes to acquire them and monetize them through advertising, all the integration is already done. That seems to be a strained explanation, particularly in the case of paid Google Apps. > Interestingly I signed up for the trial of Google App Engine. The only thing they wanted to approve me was for me to enter my GMail password. In other words, they'd already scanned my email and decided if I was a good candidate. Worrying, no? The trial period for App Engine was, I think, limited for the purpose of controlling rate of growth on the platform until it was ready to be thrown wide open. I don't think there was evaluation involved at all, which is why they didn't need anything other than your login information. When Google has rolled out products with limited previews with evaluation criteria, they've had applicants provide explanations of their intended use and other information.
- nr0mx 13y ago
  > Everything Google does is about ad sales. Self driving cars? What are you going to do when your car does the driving for you? Consume media of course, with ads all over it! Of course, you make perfect sense. I guess we know why if Google gets into private spaceflight.
moultano 13y ago
And in fact, it doesn't. http://www.google.com/policies/technologies/ http://www.google.com/policies/technologies/ "We don’t sell users’ personal information."
- alanh 13y ago
  So, there’s a semantic trick here. Technically, when an AdSense client targets their ads only to North American users who expressed an interest in <certain medication>, Google didn’t “sell that user’s personal information,” but… whomever is on the other side of that ad, once clicked — and their partners — have just paid Google to find a user who likely has <medical problem>. Isn’t that selling personal information? Actually, if not legally?
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Technically, when an AdSense client targets their ads only to North American users who expressed an interest in <certain medication>, Google didn’t “sell that user’s personal information,” but… whomever is on the other side of that ad, once clicked — and their partners — have just paid Google to find a user who likely has <medical problem>. > Isn’t that selling personal information? Actually, if not legally? No. Its selling the service of advertising to people for whom some fact holds. The rest is assumption on the part of the party purchasing the advertising based on the fact of that purchase and behavior in response to the advertising. The response to the advertising is what provides personal information, just as it is in the case of nontargetted advertising in offline media where the advertising includes a call to action which is directed (through the content of the add rather than user-specific targeting) to people for whom certain facts hold. Unless you are going to argue that everyone who sells advertising space to people who include a call to action that involves a response to the party purchasing the advertising is "selling personal information" since they are selling advertisers a mechanism by which a message to can be sent to which the response can be used to deduce personal information, then, no, what Google is doing isn't selling personal information.
    - alanh 13y ago

Google could definitly still sell ads (it doesn't need to give private data to third party to do that).

by tonfa 13y ago

Google could definitly still sell ads (it doesn't need to give private data to third party to do that).

gaius 13y ago

Sure. But if it did, it could sell more ads. Everything Google does is about ad sales. Self driving cars? What are you going to do when your car does the driving for you? Consume media of course, with ads all over it! Etc, etc. Which is not a good or a bad thing in and of itself, it's what they do, like McDonald's sell hamburgers. The question you must ask yourself is do you want Big Mac and Fries for every meal?

dragonwriter 13y ago
> Everything Google does is about ad sales. Interesting contention. Could you explain exactly how paid web services that do not embed advertising that Google provides (paid Google Apps, and backend services like App Engine, Computer Engine, Cloud SQL, Cloud Datastore, etc.) are "about ad sales" rather than about leveraging Google's core technical competencies in search, cloud storage, and web services to generate non-advertising revenue streams?
- gaius 13y ago
  Sure. These things are about getting new and interesting companies to build on Google's infrastructure. Then when the time comes to acquire them and monetize them through advertising, all the integration is already done. Interestingly I signed up for the trial of Google App Engine. The only thing they wanted to approve me was for me to enter my GMail password. In other words, they'd already scanned my email and decided if I was a good candidate. Worrying, no?
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Sure. These things are about getting new and interesting companies to build on Google's infrastructure. Then when the time comes to acquire them and monetize them through advertising, all the integration is already done. That seems to be a strained explanation, particularly in the case of paid Google Apps. > Interestingly I signed up for the trial of Google App Engine. The only thing they wanted to approve me was for me to enter my GMail password. In other words, they'd already scanned my email and decided if I was a good candidate. Worrying, no? The trial period for App Engine was, I think, limited for the purpose of controlling rate of growth on the platform until it was ready to be thrown wide open. I don't think there was evaluation involved at all, which is why they didn't need anything other than your login information. When Google has rolled out products with limited previews with evaluation criteria, they've had applicants provide explanations of their intended use and other information.
nr0mx 13y ago
> Everything Google does is about ad sales. Self driving cars? What are you going to do when your car does the driving for you? Consume media of course, with ads all over it! Of course, you make perfect sense. I guess we know why if Google gets into private spaceflight.

moultano 13y ago

And in fact, it doesn't. http://www.google.com/policies/technologies/ http://www.google.com/policies/technologies/ "We don’t sell users’ personal information."

alanh 13y ago
So, there’s a semantic trick here. Technically, when an AdSense client targets their ads only to North American users who expressed an interest in <certain medication>, Google didn’t “sell that user’s personal information,” but… whomever is on the other side of that ad, once clicked — and their partners — have just paid Google to find a user who likely has <medical problem>. Isn’t that selling personal information? Actually, if not legally?
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Technically, when an AdSense client targets their ads only to North American users who expressed an interest in <certain medication>, Google didn’t “sell that user’s personal information,” but… whomever is on the other side of that ad, once clicked — and their partners — have just paid Google to find a user who likely has <medical problem>. > Isn’t that selling personal information? Actually, if not legally? No. Its selling the service of advertising to people for whom some fact holds. The rest is assumption on the part of the party purchasing the advertising based on the fact of that purchase and behavior in response to the advertising. The response to the advertising is what provides personal information, just as it is in the case of nontargetted advertising in offline media where the advertising includes a call to action which is directed (through the content of the add rather than user-specific targeting) to people for whom certain facts hold. Unless you are going to argue that everyone who sells advertising space to people who include a call to action that involves a response to the party purchasing the advertising is "selling personal information" since they are selling advertisers a mechanism by which a message to can be sent to which the response can be used to deduce personal information, then, no, what Google is doing isn't selling personal information.
  - alanh 13y ago