Ask HN: What is causing the recent sudden uproars against Google? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What is causing the recent sudden uproars against Google?

#31

Post by alexgmcm » Fri, Sep 28, 2018, 7:41 AM UTC

open-source-ux wrote: post #25

decasteve wrote: post #10

It's been happening for years. A few last straws lately? Google did a lot to gain the trust of it's users over a decade ago. What it did and said as an organization was that they were the good guys and could be trusted, and that everyone else was evil. Google were the stewards of the internet. Maybe it was after they took the company public but it slowly started to ratchet in the other direction. Products became incr…

"...they were the good guys and could be trusted " I've said this before but Google is neither the 'good guy' or the 'bad guy'. They aren't there to look out for your best interests and we'd all be much better if we stop ascribing human qualities to gigantic corporations. And they have never been 'stewards of the internet'. As for the recent uproar, well better late than never. The attitude of the tech community is i…

Why is it indefensible?

Surely what matters is what they do with the data - if it's being used to improve their products and services then why is it bad?

Are there concrete examples of where they have abused this data?

Re: Ask HN: What is causing the recent sudden uproars against Google?

#32

Post by codemusings » Fri, Sep 28, 2018, 1:32 PM UTC

k8martian wrote: post #29

There are so many companies track their users, small, medium to huge enterprise. Why just focus on google? Do you think microsoft don't track users? Linked-in has no tracking? facebook, apple and those small and medium size company? I should change my question to what company has zero tracking or spying on their users? Do you guys know how many tracking and analytic companies out there help businesses to gather user…

Well IMO Google has an unprecidented ubiquity and scale that out-performs all of the companies you listed (Search, Chrome, Android, Youtube). Even Facebook.

For Apple I'd like to see a source that backs up that claim because they're obviously not in the business of selling personal data.

Re: Ask HN: What is causing the recent sudden uproars against Google?

#33

Post by chrisco255 » Sat, Sep 29, 2018, 9:21 AM UTC

sseth wrote: post #30

chrisco255 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Scroogled campaign was simply about the cost differences for businesses to advertise on Bing vs. Google. So, in other words, just like any other ad campaign you see between competitors...

You may want to check this list and decide for yourself what it was about : https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/22/5135626/scroogled-micros... I should add that i have not seen Google itself run such attack ads. What I have always found strange is that the companies that seem to attack google on privacy are not so hot themselves. Microsoft's rifling through hotmail emails to catch a leaker, and Apple's handing over of i…

Those are 6 year old editorials, in other words, opinion articles. Microsoft has every right to run ad campaigns however they like. Apple attacked PC with it's "I'm a Mac, I'm hip and cool and PCs are bloated, etc." ads in the 00s. They were effective, I'm not convinced the Scroogled campaign was effective at all. Ad campaigns resemble political ads because political ads are ad campaigns. They're all different flavors of the same damn trade.