4 ms·

Why are you trying to deflect attention away from Google?

jamesaguilar 13y ago
Because the problem is not specific to Google. (Not to put words in the gp's mouth, but that seems like an obvious reason to broaden the focus to me.)
- embolism 13y ago
  True, but Google is by far the most dangerous aggregation of personal information, and the topic of this conversation. It's also a company that spends a lot of effort telling people to trust them when that is clearly unjustified.
  - drivebyacct2 13y ago
    > the most dangerous aggregation of personal information Speak for yourself.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - oelmekki 13y ago
      I think he's right. There's something terrible, here. Google services let us search/share/store data with an efficiency yet unseen at this scale. It's probably not that much of an exaggeration to say google is empowering humanity. But doing so, it handles so much data about so much people that even with good will, it's a danger. How secret services and cops could not be interested in the huge amount of data magically made available by google services ? The aggregation itself is the danger - and the feature we all love.
      - drivebyacct2 13y ago
        I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, but why would I be worried about Google? I search through Bing. My email is through Hotmail/Outlook. My online cloud sync is through Skydrive. Why am I cowering from Google any more than MS or anyone else that I give huge amounts of my data too?
        embolism 13y ago
        Mostly because Google is a lot better at it and had far more sources of information about each individual to draw on, for example they have your search history, the history of all your browsing (via analytics), location history for users of maps on mobile, calendar, and email, and docs. It doesn't take much to imagine what kind of dossier could be constructed on an individual from that data. Quite likely they do know more about many people than those people know about themselves. Of course this can be used beneficially, but it's also the exact information needed to manipulate people. That is far more than any other service is able to aggregate, and Google's business is fundamentally about mining that data in a way that is not for other corporations. But yes, the others are a problem too - just on an orders of magnitude lower scale than Google.
digitalengineer 13y ago
I am not. Google is only doing what it is forced to. I am activly searching for google alternatives. Ghostly app on iphone, ghostly for firefox, duckduck, but a good mail client? With easy encription? Not available...
- embolism 13y ago
  Google isn't forced to rely on stockpiling personal data as a business model. It could create the exact private service that you are looking for, but it intentionally does not.
  - jmillikin 13y ago
    > It could create the exact private service that you are looking for, but it intentionally does not. Most of Google's products are "webapp" equivalents to traditional desktop software. It is not possible to create webapps which are private against the webapp's host. What you are essentially arguing is that Google ought to shut down its current business in favor of writing security-conscious desktop apps. The result would be that users would all jump ship to another provider, and then Google would go out of business and people on HN would be complaining that $NEW_COMPANY doesn't respect user privacy. If you want to suggest a course of action that will improve user privacy, it must be one that users will actually be willing to support.
    - embolism 13y ago
      Google was perfectly capable of creating a secure browser and propagating it through all manner of mechanisms. There is no reason they couldn't do the same with a secure mail system, for that matter they could just deliver it as a chrome update and smoothly redirect people into it if they wanted to. There is absolutely no reason why users would 'all jump ship' to another provider. All you are really saying is that Google exposes data to the government because its business model dictates that it put privacy below behavioral profiling it its list of priorities. That is not in dispute. You are arguing that Google is incapable of solving this problem, whereas I think that a group of people as talented and resourceful as Google could solve it if they wanted to, but they aren't trying because they think their value is tied to the amount of personal data they collect, rather than what problems they solve for society. Right now, this privacy problem is a serious one for society, and who is better positioned than Google to solve it?

Because the problem is not specific to Google. (Not to put words in the gp's mouth, but that seems like an obvious reason to broaden the focus to me.)

embolism 13y ago
True, but Google is by far the most dangerous aggregation of personal information, and the topic of this conversation. It's also a company that spends a lot of effort telling people to trust them when that is clearly unjustified.
- drivebyacct2 13y ago
  > the most dangerous aggregation of personal information Speak for yourself.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - oelmekki 13y ago
    I think he's right. There's something terrible, here. Google services let us search/share/store data with an efficiency yet unseen at this scale. It's probably not that much of an exaggeration to say google is empowering humanity. But doing so, it handles so much data about so much people that even with good will, it's a danger. How secret services and cops could not be interested in the huge amount of data magically made available by google services ? The aggregation itself is the danger - and the feature we all love.
    - drivebyacct2 13y ago
      I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, but why would I be worried about Google? I search through Bing. My email is through Hotmail/Outlook. My online cloud sync is through Skydrive. Why am I cowering from Google any more than MS or anyone else that I give huge amounts of my data too?
      - embolism 13y ago
        Mostly because Google is a lot better at it and had far more sources of information about each individual to draw on, for example they have your search history, the history of all your browsing (via analytics), location history for users of maps on mobile, calendar, and email, and docs. It doesn't take much to imagine what kind of dossier could be constructed on an individual from that data. Quite likely they do know more about many people than those people know about themselves. Of course this can be used beneficially, but it's also the exact information needed to manipulate people. That is far more than any other service is able to aggregate, and Google's business is fundamentally about mining that data in a way that is not for other corporations. But yes, the others are a problem too - just on an orders of magnitude lower scale than Google.

digitalengineer 13y ago

I am not. Google is only doing what it is forced to. I am activly searching for google alternatives. Ghostly app on iphone, ghostly for firefox, duckduck, but a good mail client? With easy encription? Not available...

embolism 13y ago
Google isn't forced to rely on stockpiling personal data as a business model. It could create the exact private service that you are looking for, but it intentionally does not.
- jmillikin 13y ago
  > It could create the exact private service that you are looking for, but it intentionally does not. Most of Google's products are "webapp" equivalents to traditional desktop software. It is not possible to create webapps which are private against the webapp's host. What you are essentially arguing is that Google ought to shut down its current business in favor of writing security-conscious desktop apps. The result would be that users would all jump ship to another provider, and then Google would go out of business and people on HN would be complaining that $NEW_COMPANY doesn't respect user privacy. If you want to suggest a course of action that will improve user privacy, it must be one that users will actually be willing to support.
  - embolism 13y ago
    Google was perfectly capable of creating a secure browser and propagating it through all manner of mechanisms. There is no reason they couldn't do the same with a secure mail system, for that matter they could just deliver it as a chrome update and smoothly redirect people into it if they wanted to. There is absolutely no reason why users would 'all jump ship' to another provider. All you are really saying is that Google exposes data to the government because its business model dictates that it put privacy below behavioral profiling it its list of priorities. That is not in dispute. You are arguing that Google is incapable of solving this problem, whereas I think that a group of people as talented and resourceful as Google could solve it if they wanted to, but they aren't trying because they think their value is tied to the amount of personal data they collect, rather than what problems they solve for society. Right now, this privacy problem is a serious one for society, and who is better positioned than Google to solve it?