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Google: Open Letter to Australians

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Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#391

Post by nojvek »

chris_wot wrote: post #262
knorker wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To hell with "them"? Are you saying Australians should cut off their nose to spite their face? I think you missed the whole point of this letter. Let me clarify: "Oi mate, the government wants to force us to fuck you royally. We don't want to. Please help stop yourself getting fucked. Cheers, cunt."

And here is another Australian who says "Oi mate, Google don't want to pay taxes for profits they made in Australia. They don't want to invest in schools, universities, infrastructure or anything else through reasonable taxation. Google are fucking over Australians".

Google is a for profit entity which is legally bound to optimize value for shareholders. Therefore they will follow whatever taxation laws there are. Same with Amazon, MSFT, Apple etc.

Change the tax laws. Google isn’t doing anything wrong (morally yes, legally no). It’s how public corporations work.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#392

Post by geofft »

ignoramous wrote: post #384
geofft wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim you're replying to is very specific, and starts off by acknowledging that Google does not live up to "Don't be evil" in general , so I don't think the Medium post (which indeed describes some pretty evil behavior) refutes it. The claim is that Google does a much better job of protecting and securing your private information and not turning it against you than the Australian government - not that they do goo…

> Let me put this another way - if the Australian government ran a free email service, would you advise every Gmail user in Australia to switch? False dichotomy? I think, as a technologist you'd agree we could do better than Gmail? > The claim is that Google does a much better job of protecting and securing your private information I concur, though (imo), it is a folly to assume Google would continue to uphold highes…

> I think, as a technologist you'd agree we could do better than Gmail?

No, actually.

I mean, yes, as a programmer I agree that it's possible to violate people's privacy less than Google does. You simply don't write the privacy-violating code, simple as that.

But as an employed person in tech I don't know who's going to do it. Reliably running a secure email service is hard. Companies are pushed by all sorts of pressures. I think a lot of us have realized, since a week ago, that it's not as realistic as we hoped to do better than Chrome. You can have world-class software engineers working for decades on an excellent, privacy-focused browser, and someone will come along and say that you're not monetizing it enough and lay you off.

So, in fairness, I host my email with Fastmail (which happens to be headquartered in Australia, even). But I pay for it, because I understand that this is how I avoid them monetizing me, and frankly, requiring everyone to pay for email is both unrealistic (in part for the reason you described about Google pushing the price ceiling to zero) and unfair (not everyone can afford it). I'm also aware that Fastmail is almost certainly worse than Gmail at resisting highly-skilled targeted attacks from APTs etc.; I've just decided that that's not in my threat model. If I happened to become a high-profile target, I absolutely would switch to Gmail and Google's Advanced Protection.

Google only cares about their bottom line, it's true. So does Fastmail - and fortunately for me, their bottom line is improved by me paying them instead of them monetizing me. And governments care only about power. There is some pressure on both Google's bottom line and the Australian government's power to be at least somewhat responsible: both could collapse if there was a serious breach of public confidence. The question we have right now is which pressure is stronger. The question we have for the long term is how we make both of those pressures stronger - ideally strong enough to support someone who does want to do better than Gmail for free email or better than Chrome for a free browser.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#393

Post by neiman »

sukilot wrote: post #369
neiman wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to have a place where I can tick, "Google, please never ever collect any of my data". But I don't have such a thing, not because it's impossible to create one.

Have you tried incognito mode?

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/06/03/google-p...

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#394

Post by neiman »

tetrometal wrote: post #386
neiman wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data. They've been decent custodians to data they force users to give. It's like complimenting whoever stole my bike last year for taking good care of it.

Interpreting your comment charitably, I assume you intended hyperbole when using the word force here, and in your comparison to actual force with respect to theft of private property. Still, I think we should be careful with our words, especially lately as words are being redefined out of apparent expedience. So, tedious or pedantic as it may be, I feel obligated to gently push back and point out that no force is bei…

I meant 'force' as in "coercion or compulsion".

> I think we should be careful with our words

I agree, but this goes both ways. So first, you shouldn't assume I didn't mean a word I choose to use just because you disagree with the usage (though in itself disagreeing is fine of course). Second, don't change my word 'force' to 'aggressive force', a term I never wrote (giving the sentence a whole new meaning).

Lastly, there was no "aggressive force" involved in stealing my bicycle. Someone took it in the middle of the night without my agreement (=coerced me to "give" the bicycle to them) in the same way that Google takes my data without my agreement.

So if you agree with the usage of 'force' in the bicycle case, I don't see an issue of using the same verb in Google case.

Again, feel free to disagree, but please don't change my words:-)

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#395

Post by quicklyfrozen »

sytelus wrote: post #121
mgraczyk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As somebody who works on ranking and personalization products, I can confidently assure you that you would not prefer a less personalized experience. You don't have to take my word for it though, you can opt-out of personalization on Google here: https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols Try it for a month and see if you prefer it.

What would be good and bad examples where personalization excels and fails?

Given the generic names for a lot of things in tech, it's at least mildly useful that Google knows I'm probably not searching for info on snakes or fruit.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#396

Post by chris_wot »

knorker wrote: post #271
chris_wot wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here is another Australian who says "Oi mate, Google don't want to pay taxes for profits they made in Australia. They don't want to invest in schools, universities, infrastructure or anything else through reasonable taxation. Google are fucking over Australians".

But it's orthogonal. It's like you're saying you want to be fucked by both Google and the government. Why do two wrongs make a right, to you? Again: cutting off your nose to spite your face.

No, I want Google to pay taxes for profit they earned in Australia.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#397

Post by bryan_w »

neiman wrote: post #333
amf12 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been decent custodians to data they force users to give. Fair enough. It's like complimenting whoever stole my bike last year for taking good care of it. I don't necessarily buy this argument. They collect a lot of data, and we could argue whether they need to collect so much data, but that is not necessarily 'stealing' your data.

I put an ENORMOUS amount of effort not to have Google involved in my life and for them not to have ANY of my data, and I constantly find myself failing. So yes, I feel it's fair to call it stealing my data.

What data would they have on you? I'm assuming you're using a browser with tracking protection extensions, so what data are they stealing from you?

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#398

Post by ohgodplsno »

eru wrote: post #286
harry8 wrote: post #221

Open comment from an Australian to google: "Pay your f#$king tax like the rest of us or shut the f%$ck up." This comment stands apart from any and all implications of their special interest policy pleadings above which are all pretty tedious in comparison. Google don't pay tax for profit made selling in Australia. To hell with them and literally any case they have to make.

Google complies with all the relevant laws. If Australians want Google to pay more taxes, they should change the tax laws to make them pay more taxes.

"Multinational makes money dance through 13 countries to pretend that Google Ireland is an absolutely different entity to Google Australia".

Google can legitimately fuck off. The amount of money they have stolen from states throughout the world is measured in billions. And some people have the gall to come and say "bUt It'S lEgAL!1".

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#399

Post by LockAndLol »

eru wrote: post #286
harry8 wrote: post #221

Open comment from an Australian to google: "Pay your f#$king tax like the rest of us or shut the f%$ck up." This comment stands apart from any and all implications of their special interest policy pleadings above which are all pretty tedious in comparison. Google don't pay tax for profit made selling in Australia. To hell with them and literally any case they have to make.

Google complies with all the relevant laws. If Australians want Google to pay more taxes, they should change the tax laws to make them pay more taxes.

> Google complies with all the relevant laws.

Yeah, they use every loophole the system provides to pay the least amount possible. If I used every loophole to take advantage of a system and make it do what I want, I'd be labelled a criminal. I'd be called a hacker. But since it's a big company and the system isn't a computer, well... I guess it's OK then.

They're hacking the system and you're fine with it because "technically they're complying with relevant laws". Just because something is legally possible doesn't mean it's right.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#400

Post by dongvsascript »

nl wrote: post #245
dongvsascript wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's the method i used to move capital in my small american business when i opened an office in russia. a company in another country is a separate legal entity. you charge market rates, as you would any other company. it has zero to do with my post. the complaint is profit is taxed instead of revenue. the complaint is not valid.

Do you really believe Google makes no profit in Australia? I understand for accounting purposes they don't. But they make a lot of money with very little expenses...

Right - they have very little in expenses in Australia. Because all the development and maintenance is in other countries. That is my entire point. So they take the market value (transfer price) of the expenses and transfer that money to countries where those expenses are incurred. They then pay for expenses related to their local offices and 2000 employees. What's left over is called profit, is taxed in Australia, and they paid $100mil of taxes on that profit last year.

Lets say you are sitting in Chicago. You create a search engine, get a thousand developers working on it. You then set up an Australian portal for that web page, on which Australian businesses buy ads. In your version, the costs for Australia are zero. In reality, those costs include the development of the search engine in Chicago.

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