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Would you sell your privacy for a bargain on a phone? I think I might be tempted to. Sheesh.
by ax0n 17y ago
Would you sell your privacy for a bargain on a phone? I think I might be tempted to. Sheesh.
- dschobel 17y agois there something specifically wrong with Android phones vs other platforms or is that another tired reference to the Schmidt quote?
- alex_c 17y agoI don't know about wrong, per se, but Android phones are absolutely tied to your Google account. Doesn't have to be your MAIN Google account, of course, but still.
- dschobel 17y agoSure, to the extent you want to access google services. But isn't that a given? My desktop is tied to my google account to the same extent that I choose to use google search and email.
- alex_c 17y agoNo, to the extent where the first step in booting up your Android phone for the first time is filling in your Google account information (at least on the HTC Dream I tried). It's closer to Windows asking you for your MSN or Live or whatever login the first time you boot it up.
- ax0n 17y agoAnd here it is. I have a specific account for only my GVoice. It would, rest assured, be tied to that one. Not much else happens on that account.
- ax0n 17y agoI love Google. I use Google. And I would have said the exact same thing two years ago. At least Schmidt came out and eventually said what pretty much every company that has shareholders stands for. Ergo, this is not a tired reference to anything, really. It just so happens that Google by their very nature already knows a lot more about me than my current provider (vzw) will ever know. And using a phone on their service will increase Google's knowledge that much more. I'm honestly not much a smart-phone person. I was an early adopter (Windows CE phones) and ever since then, it's given me a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Smart-phones have not changed much, really. At their core, most are not as good at being a phone as some of their less-snazzy counterparts. That was my original gripe. What has changed: ubiquity of mobile-friendly content and increased bandwidth to handsets. Now it doesn't matter much. Smart-phone users are more likely to use their devices for everything BUT talking on the phone. At any rate, I think the fact that android ties to a google account is a bit of a privacy fail, but IIRC Sidekick does the same thing, roughly (though not to Google). Then the fact that by default the calls will go through GVoice means that Google absolutely knows everyone you call, everyone that calls you, every SMS/MMS. The privacy implications of that are similar to Google setting up its own high-performance DNS (that's been hashed over in a few threads here on YC as well, poke around). Still, with all that... I'm kinda lusting for this gadget.