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No, it's very different. If I'm concerned about my privacy, I'm concerned about who knows stuff about me. Google knows a bunch of stuff about their customers i

No, it's very different. If I'm concerned about my privacy, I'm concerned about who knows stuff about me. Google knows a bunch of stuff about their customers inherently (because their customers have all their email on Google servers, do Google searches, etc.), so Google customers have already decided they trust Google with that information. If Google were selling it, they'd be passing it along to other organizations that users haven't explicitly trusted. That'd be bad. But they don't do that -- they use their information to show you things based on what they know, with targeted ads; that might bother you from an aesthetic/anti-capitalist perspective, but isn't an extra concern from a privacy perspective. (Interesting fun fact: You know who does actively sell your information? Your bank, for just about any big bank.)

jacobolus 11y ago
(1) Google also puts ads and other little tracking widgets (google analytics, G+ social buttons, etc.) all over the web, gathering massive amounts of information about people’s browsing habits unrelated to any direct customer relationship or informed consent. (2) Use of Google search does not at all imply that a customer wants all of their searches to be associated with their identity, processed, stored indefinitely, used to build a comprehensive dossier to better target advertising on unrelated pages, or handed over to nation-state spooks who come asking. It’s not at all clear that most customers understand what information they’re handing over or what can be done with it when they use services like search. [Yes, plenty of other ad networks, analytics companies, social media services, etc. do the same thing, and plenty of other types of companies (e.g. the banks you mention) and government agencies also build permanent profiles of people based on whatever scraps of data they can; this is not only a Google problem. It’s creepy when anyone does it, which is why there should be better regulatory oversight ensuring that customers know what data is collected and how it is used, restricting certain types of data aggregation and customer profiling, and placing limits on how long various types of data can be kept.]
- mkozlows 11y ago
  Re 1 - I agree that is by a mile the most problematic part of Google's business. It's not a problem that Google knows what's in the emails I store on their servers -- of course they do, I put them there -- but it is problematic if they know I go to www.controversialsite.com when they should have no reason to. But the implication there is that Google's most privacy-invasive product, by a mile, is Google Analytics, which doesn't really help Cook's case in any meaningful way, because that has nothing to do with the Google services that compete with Apple.
  - magicalist 11y ago
    Analytics uses first-party cookies for the site's domain, not your google cookie(s). And you'll have to take them at their word, but they don't combine it with some IP address trickiness or whatever (though that would be a pretty bad idea if you want decent profiles anyway): https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en
    - anon1385 11y ago
      That is just a Terms Of Service change away. Such legal changes aren't even unlikely: Google already changed their Terms of Service in the past to allow them to combine information from separate sites and services, which they didn't explicitly claim to do before[1]. The 'reassurances' provided in Google's Terms of Service don't mean jack shit when they have the power to change the terms in the future to whatever they want. [1] http://www.cnet.com/news/google-wants-ability-to-combine-your-user-data/# http://www.cnet.com/news/google-wants-ability-to-combine-you...!
      - magicalist 11y ago
        That would only work going forward. You wouldn't be able to merge the data retroactively. And why would they do that is the question. Again, since they don't serve google cookies on analytics this would be virtually useless. An IP address isn't much to go on. Even a 5% misidentification rate would lead to horribly polluted data about users very quickly.

jacobolus 11y ago

(1) Google also puts ads and other little tracking widgets (google analytics, G+ social buttons, etc.) all over the web, gathering massive amounts of information about people’s browsing habits unrelated to any direct customer relationship or informed consent. (2) Use of Google search does not at all imply that a customer wants all of their searches to be associated with their identity, processed, stored indefinitely, used to build a comprehensive dossier to better target advertising on unrelated pages, or handed over to nation-state spooks who come asking. It’s not at all clear that most customers understand what information they’re handing over or what can be done with it when they use services like search. [Yes, plenty of other ad networks, analytics companies, social media services, etc. do the same thing, and plenty of other types of companies (e.g. the banks you mention) and government agencies also build permanent profiles of people based on whatever scraps of data they can; this is not only a Google problem. It’s creepy when anyone does it, which is why there should be better regulatory oversight ensuring that customers know what data is collected and how it is used, restricting certain types of data aggregation and customer profiling, and placing limits on how long various types of data can be kept.]

mkozlows 11y ago
Re 1 - I agree that is by a mile the most problematic part of Google's business. It's not a problem that Google knows what's in the emails I store on their servers -- of course they do, I put them there -- but it is problematic if they know I go to www.controversialsite.com when they should have no reason to. But the implication there is that Google's most privacy-invasive product, by a mile, is Google Analytics, which doesn't really help Cook's case in any meaningful way, because that has nothing to do with the Google services that compete with Apple.
- magicalist 11y ago
  Analytics uses first-party cookies for the site's domain, not your google cookie(s). And you'll have to take them at their word, but they don't combine it with some IP address trickiness or whatever (though that would be a pretty bad idea if you want decent profiles anyway): https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en
  - anon1385 11y ago
    That is just a Terms Of Service change away. Such legal changes aren't even unlikely: Google already changed their Terms of Service in the past to allow them to combine information from separate sites and services, which they didn't explicitly claim to do before[1]. The 'reassurances' provided in Google's Terms of Service don't mean jack shit when they have the power to change the terms in the future to whatever they want. [1] http://www.cnet.com/news/google-wants-ability-to-combine-your-user-data/# http://www.cnet.com/news/google-wants-ability-to-combine-you...!
    - magicalist 11y ago
      That would only work going forward. You wouldn't be able to merge the data retroactively. And why would they do that is the question. Again, since they don't serve google cookies on analytics this would be virtually useless. An IP address isn't much to go on. Even a 5% misidentification rate would lead to horribly polluted data about users very quickly.