3 ms·

Okay, 80% of your comment is replying to a framing that you chose earlier. You said Google should spend comparable amounts of effort on X and Y. In that conte

by jholman 13y ago

Okay, 80% of your comment is replying to a framing that you chose earlier. You said Google should spend comparable amounts of effort on X and Y. In that context, I pointed out that no one spends even 10% as much effort on X as on Y, so why would you ask Google to, and you're being completely unfair. YOU chose this context. And I am _highly_ skeptical about this "reconfirm your TOS, as a hint that there's an NSL on you". (I have no inside knowledge of this, and if I did I would lie to you about it.) But if any engineer did that, and got caught, they'd go to jail. Given that 99.9% of users who're NSLed will not have read that blogpost (the crazy tinfoil-hat wild-speculation one that started this rumour), what would be the benefit? No benefit, but one conscientious engineer goes to jail. Yay. Law, in general, is just as concerned with the spirit of the law as the letter. My whole reply is that Google is already working harder on privacy, as a fraction of total resources, than nearly anyone you've ever met, and certainly more than nearly any corporation. (Unless Google is lying about basically everything, which I can't/won't prove they/we are not). Your expectations, as originally stated, are unreasonable. Disclaimer: And yes, I have a vested interest. Hopefully my argument stands on its own merits. Your call to action is insulting.

ChuckMcM 13y ago
Fair enough, we've spent a lot of effort at Blekko (also a search engine) at being conscientious designing ways that we can dis-associate data from users in order to protect our users from data that can be tied back to them. Since our taxes are reasonably straight-forward at this point it is entirely possible that we've invested more time in keeping peoples identities protected in our data than we have in minimizing our tax burden. We are a prima facie example of "someone" who has spent more effort on X than Y. But arguing exemplars misses the point. I am sure that Google is a much different place than when I left it, hell it was different between the time I joined and left. That said ... The comparison I was trying to make, and I grant you that it is imperfect, is that Google, like Apple, has billions of dollars in free cash flow and in legal testimony lately they have shown great creativity in ways to shuffle that cash around so as to avoid being required to hand it over to various revenue agencies. Google is also has billions of data points about all of the individuals that use its services. If those data points were dollars, and the revenue agencies were intelligence agencies, what creative ways might they come up with to disassociate which data point belongs to which user such that they could still use the data but not be compelled to hand it over. Just like they use those free cash dollars rather than hand some percentage over as tax. I've got nothing but respect for the smart people at Google, and still have friends that work there (and folks who used to work here and are now working there :-). Perhaps I'm misreading your tone but it sounds like you want to pick a fight.

by jholman 13y ago

ChuckMcM 13y ago

Fair enough, we've spent a lot of effort at Blekko (also a search engine) at being conscientious designing ways that we can dis-associate data from users in order to protect our users from data that can be tied back to them. Since our taxes are reasonably straight-forward at this point it is entirely possible that we've invested more time in keeping peoples identities protected in our data than we have in minimizing our tax burden. We are a prima facie example of "someone" who has spent more effort on X than Y. But arguing exemplars misses the point. I am sure that Google is a much different place than when I left it, hell it was different between the time I joined and left. That said ... The comparison I was trying to make, and I grant you that it is imperfect, is that Google, like Apple, has billions of dollars in free cash flow and in legal testimony lately they have shown great creativity in ways to shuffle that cash around so as to avoid being required to hand it over to various revenue agencies. Google is also has billions of data points about all of the individuals that use its services. If those data points were dollars, and the revenue agencies were intelligence agencies, what creative ways might they come up with to disassociate which data point belongs to which user such that they could still use the data but not be compelled to hand it over. Just like they use those free cash dollars rather than hand some percentage over as tax. I've got nothing but respect for the smart people at Google, and still have friends that work there (and folks who used to work here and are now working there :-). Perhaps I'm misreading your tone but it sounds like you want to pick a fight.