Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings
1–10 of 85 posts
Re: Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings
#2I used to be pretty much in favour of opt-out for stuff like this, but I think at this point the industry itself has managed to prove that it can’t be trusted with anything but legislation guaranteeing opt-in.
Re: Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings
#3This quote basically disproves the phrase Sundar repeatedly parroted to Congressional members about making it easy for people to configure their privacy settings. You can bet this quote is going to be read to his face if there's another hearing.
The author of the statement was redacted in the public version, but my bet is if that is still a current employee, they won't be for much longer. Because this quote is going to hang over Google for the rest of this process.
And as many Google people are probably being reminded this week: Assume all of your work emails may some day be public, and used against you or your employer in a court of law.
Re: Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings
#4I used to be pretty much in favour of opt-out for stuff like this, but I think at this point the industry itself has managed to prove that it can’t be trusted with anything but legislation guaranteeing opt-in.
Absent legislation, I'm all for a "nuke it all" approach when it comes to ad-blocking and tracker-blocking. It won't catch everything, especially platform-level privacy concerns like this, but it does move good usable defaults over to the user's control. No need to rely on companies who continue to fail to act in good faith.
Re: Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings
#5This quote basically disproves the phrase Sundar repeatedly parroted to Congressional members about making it easy for people to configure their privacy settings. You can bet this quote is going to be read to his face if there's another hearing. The author of the statement was redacted in the public version, but my bet is if that is still a current employee, they won't be for much longer. Because this quote is going…
> if there's another hearing.
Oh, no, another hearing. I am sure he is very afraid of another strongly worded letter after that one.
We constantly see executives and officials lie at those hearings, yet they face no repercussions whatsoever.
Re: Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings
#6There's a usability aspect to this.
If you disable location services for Yelp, it's pretty unfriendly -- it chooses to make it as difficult as possible for you to use the app to get you to turn location back on. The Google approach for Maps is more pragmatic IMO -- lower resolution location data makes sure I don't get a McDonald's in Finland when I'm in Kentucky.
The hard thing is that I don't want Yelp, Google, etc tracking my movements in a 10-meter radius forever, but I want location from a contextual perspective. I don't think you can do that without meaningful policy controls outside of your local computer.
Re: Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings
#7This isn't a surprise. Google is a huge company with probably hundreds of teams working on these things. The fact that the privacy settings can be figured out at all is a bit of a miracle.
I doubt the privacy settings are "designed" as much as it is a bunch of disparate teams working on it together with maybe somebody coordinating it.
Re: Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings
#8This isn't a surprise. Google is a huge company with probably hundreds of teams working on these things. The fact that the privacy settings can be figured out at all is a bit of a miracle. I doubt the privacy settings are "designed" as much as it is a bunch of disparate teams working on it together with maybe somebody coordinating it.
Sorry, that might be an explanation but it’s not an excuse. Privacy controls in a global organisation are a legal requirement for your software, and you don’t get to just haphazardly throw it together.
Re: Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings
#9This quote basically disproves the phrase Sundar repeatedly parroted to Congressional members about making it easy for people to configure their privacy settings. You can bet this quote is going to be read to his face if there's another hearing. The author of the statement was redacted in the public version, but my bet is if that is still a current employee, they won't be for much longer. Because this quote is going…
>And as many Google people are probably being reminded this week: Assume all of your work emails may some day be public, and used against you or your employer in a court of law.
They don't need to be reminded because Google has been coaching staff to basically adopt some sort of Google newspeak:
"One part of the presentation, subtitled “Communicating Safely,” advises employees on which terms are “Bad” and “Good.” Instead of “market,” employees may say “industry,” “space,” “area,” or simply cite the region, according to the presentation. Instead of “network effects,” the presentation suggests “valuable to users.”
https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/08/07/google-doc...
Re: Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings
#10This quote basically disproves the phrase Sundar repeatedly parroted to Congressional members about making it easy for people to configure their privacy settings. You can bet this quote is going to be read to his face if there's another hearing. The author of the statement was redacted in the public version, but my bet is if that is still a current employee, they won't be for much longer. Because this quote is going…
> Assume all of your work emails may some day be public, and used against you or your employer in a court of law.
True, but not necessarily bad.
There's always a gotcha document when there is an investigation -- it's the nature of the beast. There's always a tension between attorneys who want to keep everything and attorneys that would put a paper shredder in the output tray of every printer.
Without context, a quote is a quote. I saw one scenario where someone using a cliche "pets vs. cattle" analogy in context of servers was manipulated to sound like some sort of crazy person in a complaint. If it's response to a request to obfuscate or manipulate options for a specific purpose, that's one thing. If it a person asked to provide feedback from the perspective of a user, it's another.