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>When it understands that I like sport team X, it's my data It is, but that's pretty useless unless Google also knows so that it can send you the relevant upda

>When it understands that I like sport team X, it's my data It is, but that's pretty useless unless Google also knows so that it can send you the relevant updates. >When it knows where I work and live to ask Google servers the weather or how long it would take to go somewhere, still my data used as the request base. The weather, possibly (although again, it's not much use unless Google know enough to target the local weather at you). The how long to get there, not so much. One of the key things they use is info on where everyone else is. This is a classic case of pooling everyone's data in order to add value.

Aissen 11y ago
I agree about the value Maps/Waze style pooling of information. Also agreed that social (what your contacts like) recommendations might be useful. Leaving aside the possibility of implementing those in a P2P fashion, I'm just saying this is not all there is, and that is in fact a minority of the useful stuff.
forgottenpass 11y ago
It is, but that's pretty useless unless Google also knows so that it can send you the relevant updates. It's shortsighted to say that just because (example implementation) my device polls their server for $team, that it is the same as "google knowing" I like $team. The interface does not need to be authenticated, or keep logs. There is just a slippery slope between monitoring for diagnostics and abuse that incremental business value very quickly slides into tying team-specific view counters and a favorite team to my user identifier.
- prof_hobart 11y ago
  Yes there are other solutions that don't require Google to know who your favourite team is, but needing to have your device run a specific background process to constantly poll a remote server for each of the things you're interested in is a pretty clunky and resource-inefficient way of solving it vs subscribed push notifications from the server. And Google doesn't necessarily know that you like $team. It knows that the email address you used to sign up to the alerts has requested updates on it. Is that really particularly scary?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

Aissen 11y ago

I agree about the value Maps/Waze style pooling of information. Also agreed that social (what your contacts like) recommendations might be useful. Leaving aside the possibility of implementing those in a P2P fashion, I'm just saying this is not all there is, and that is in fact a minority of the useful stuff.

forgottenpass 11y ago

It is, but that's pretty useless unless Google also knows so that it can send you the relevant updates. It's shortsighted to say that just because (example implementation) my device polls their server for $team, that it is the same as "google knowing" I like $team. The interface does not need to be authenticated, or keep logs. There is just a slippery slope between monitoring for diagnostics and abuse that incremental business value very quickly slides into tying team-specific view counters and a favorite team to my user identifier.

prof_hobart 11y ago
Yes there are other solutions that don't require Google to know who your favourite team is, but needing to have your device run a specific background process to constantly poll a remote server for each of the things you're interested in is a pretty clunky and resource-inefficient way of solving it vs subscribed push notifications from the server. And Google doesn't necessarily know that you like $team. It knows that the email address you used to sign up to the alerts has requested updates on it. Is that really particularly scary?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]