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Sundar Pichai: Privacy Should Not Be a Luxury Good

nytimes.com

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Re: Sundar Pichai: Privacy Should Not Be a Luxury Good

#41

Post by Z-T-T »

fyoving wrote: post #20

Yes it's lip service but this whole narrative about online/digital privacy was seize on by traditional media to bash tech companies while driving traffic to their properties. It also gives some academics and "experts" an outlet to promote their books. You have the right to choose not be watched while you're going to the bathroom but the whole online privacy "controversy" is a means by which foreign countries and othe…

> this whole narrative about online/digital privacy was seize on by traditional media to bash tech companies while driving traffic to their properties. It also gives some academics and "experts" an outlet to promote their books.

[...]

> regular people don't care about it

Who's buying the books and visiting traditional media properties then?

Re: Sundar Pichai: Privacy Should Not Be a Luxury Good

#43

Post by fyoving »

Z-T-T wrote: post #41
fyoving wrote: post #20

Yes it's lip service but this whole narrative about online/digital privacy was seize on by traditional media to bash tech companies while driving traffic to their properties. It also gives some academics and "experts" an outlet to promote their books. You have the right to choose not be watched while you're going to the bathroom but the whole online privacy "controversy" is a means by which foreign countries and othe…

> this whole narrative about online/digital privacy was seize on by traditional media to bash tech companies while driving traffic to their properties. It also gives some academics and "experts" an outlet to promote their books. [...] > regular people don't care about it Who's buying the books and visiting traditional media properties then?

Fair point, but there are lots of reasons to skim an article and not every academic is getting rich off of hawking their books, sometimes it's an excuse to talk about their publishings, and one could get consulting gigs out of the attention.

The masses though, they don't care:

"Facebook users care less about privacy than regulators"

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-growth-analysis-...

Re: Sundar Pichai: Privacy Should Not Be a Luxury Good

#44

Post by Z-T-T »

fyoving wrote: post #43
Z-T-T wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this whole narrative about online/digital privacy was seize on by traditional media to bash tech companies while driving traffic to their properties. It also gives some academics and "experts" an outlet to promote their books. [...] > regular people don't care about it Who's buying the books and visiting traditional media properties then?

Fair point, but there are lots of reasons to skim an article and not every academic is getting rich off of hawking their books, sometimes it's an excuse to talk about their publishings, and one could get consulting gigs out of the attention. The masses though, they don't care: "Facebook users care less about privacy than regulators" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-growth-analysis-...

I can't see anywhere in that article any mention of what Facebook users think about online privacy, let alone that they don't care.

Re: Sundar Pichai: Privacy Should Not Be a Luxury Good

#45

Post by nashashmi »

olliej wrote: post #31

Says ceo of a company who’s business model is predicated in tracking people. Much like facebook’s idea of privacy, they are conflating your actual privacy with themselves not selling your raw data. Eg. Just because they track you, and have access to all your data, doesn’t mean they’re violating your privacy - the line only occurs if they sell that information directly.

There business model is not predicated on tracking people. That's Facebook and Google tried to copy them. Their model is based on data mining. They belive lots of insights are available then. And a better product can be made available then.

Re: Sundar Pichai: Privacy Should Not Be a Luxury Good

#46

Post by username223 »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #34

I'm not sure why everyone here is so concerned about the fact Google collects data, but doesn't actually sell it? Google might connect ads and your data anonymously, or use algorithms applied to your data for their services, but they've never been shown to actually give your data to anyone, nor to abuse it in any way. Compare this to how lazy other companies have been with data breaches (Apple, Sony, Equifax, a ton o…

> I don't get it. Of all the tech products I've had over the years, the Google ones have been the best, the most secure, the most useful. They collect more data, but as far as I've seen, they also protect it the most.

They're way less sketchy than Facebook and data brokers, and better at not letting people's data leak out ("sorry"), but the sheer volume they collect is frightening. For the average Android user, they collect every search query, complete browsing history, complete location history, and more, all "anonymized" but easily correlated to a real person, and store it more or less forever.

They've avoided Yahoo- or Equifax-scale breaches, as far as we know, but it's just a matter of time until someone hacks the world's biggest store of personal data. Even if that happens years from now, I wonder how they will monetize all of that data when merely slinging ads no longer satisfies investors.

Re: Sundar Pichai: Privacy Should Not Be a Luxury Good

#47

Post by lern_too_spel »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #28

Way back when, I had two Android phones and really liked them. I switched to Apple phone, tablet, and watch because of privacy. The title is a little strange, almost like saying you don’t need those luxury Apple devices to get privacy, but that is wrong. For the mass market, I think Apple is the company that is least bad on privacy. I use some Google services like GSuite, Play Books, and Play Movies heavily but I cri…

> For the mass market, I think Apple is the company that is least bad on privacy.

You've fallen for an audaciously mendacious marketing campaign. Try developing an app for your iDevice without telling Apple who you are or where you live. The only way to do so is to set up a shell corporation. Try setting a map application that works completely offline as your default street address handler. Impossible on iOS. Try getting your location without telling Apple where your device is. Also impossible. (Not sending your location to Google is not only possible but the default on even Google-flavored Android devices.) That's just the tip of the iceberg. Even better, Android lets you set up multiple users on a single device and easily switch between them to sandbox your private apps from your "get things done" apps.

> if Apple provided a good email service that supported custom domains, I would just use them for everything

Even assuming that Apple's marketing were true, how does this make sense? Email servers are supposed to store all your mail to make it easily searchable across all your devices. At the point a service is storing all your mail and making it searchable, its privacy implications exactly match Gmail's (but are worse than Gmail's for users in China).

Re: Sundar Pichai: Privacy Should Not Be a Luxury Good

#48

Post by ramraj07 »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #28

Way back when, I had two Android phones and really liked them. I switched to Apple phone, tablet, and watch because of privacy. The title is a little strange, almost like saying you don’t need those luxury Apple devices to get privacy, but that is wrong. For the mass market, I think Apple is the company that is least bad on privacy. I use some Google services like GSuite, Play Books, and Play Movies heavily but I cri…

I made the Android - Apple jump for the same reason four years back. Indeed I was so happy with Apple's privacy features and their business model in general. I did miss the tight integration of Google Maps and mail but felt justified for the privacy gains.

Then their growth started to slow so they jacked their prices to ten Benjamins, when really good Android phones cost half that. I really had to evaluate how much I valued my privacy from Google in particular, and it didn't feel like worth 500 every two years. Important point being compromising with my data with just Google and blocking all the other companies (Facebook, etc). Google while it's collecting a metric fuckton of data about me, seems to be a lot more transparent about it and gives clear ways to clean my slate. Also doesn't look like it shares it with any other partners. So I just figured I'll stop paying the apple tax for now, and reevaluate later if the situation changes.

Re: Sundar Pichai: Privacy Should Not Be a Luxury Good

#49

Post by olliej »

nashashmi wrote: post #45
olliej wrote: post #31

Says ceo of a company who’s business model is predicated in tracking people. Much like facebook’s idea of privacy, they are conflating your actual privacy with themselves not selling your raw data. Eg. Just because they track you, and have access to all your data, doesn’t mean they’re violating your privacy - the line only occurs if they sell that information directly.

There business model is not predicated on tracking people. That's Facebook and Google tried to copy them. Their model is based on data mining. They belive lots of insights are available then. And a better product can be made available then.

What data do you think is being mined exactly?

Re: Sundar Pichai: Privacy Should Not Be a Luxury Good

#50

Post by orcthwy012 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #30
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't we want companies to outsource the solution to legislation? I'd rather have Congress than Google be in charge of deciding how much privacy everyone deserves.

> Don't we want companies to outsource the solution to legislation? I'd rather have Congress than Google be in charge of deciding how much privacy everyone deserves. Until the legislation is written by the industry and doesn't rein them in one bit but imposes large compliance burdens on smaller competitors and further entrenches the incumbents. The actual solution isn't corporations or governments, it's people being…

What does "people being in control of their own stuff" even mean? Right now, people are in control and they choose to use software that is convenient for them, which happens to upload their data to the cloud. How do you force people to use software that doesn't do this?

It's also unclear whether in practice people being in control over their devices better protects the users - back when that was the case, malware was a bigger problem than it is now.

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