That's fine, but your comment makes no sense in response to someone who explicitly talked about their personal threat model. Of course they can grasp that other people have different ones, that's why they scoped the comment to their own.
Fair, though the comment above his was definitely asking in a more general sense.
I think it was pretty relevant nonetheless because by tweaking the UI and UX Google is actively harming their users abilities to implement the threat model they have chosen (no matter which one they choose).
There’s a huge privacy battle on the horizon in tech. The initial scuffles are just the beginning. Google and Facebook’s business models depend deeply on being able to track information that consumers are increasingly unhappy to share. Both companies attempts to diversify their dependency on such info for their revenue have been broadly unsuccessful (Google fiber or a Google car anyone?). Meanwhile the likes of Apple…
The Google fiber project was very much a aligned with their regular business model.
Google fiber is dead because deep packet inspection is dead.
The preemptive bad PR around snoopvertising and AT&T trying to compete made Google go, “oh yeah man ... we totally will not engage in deep packet inspection. Psh, stupid AT&T, what creeeps (ok guys shut it down!)”
I've had a string of Google phones going back to the Nexus 5x but, for the very reasons laid out in this article, my next phone will likely be from Apple. That will be my first Apple product.
Unfortunately, you will find iOS bad in different ways. For example: you cannot install NoScript, or anything like it, on an iOS browser. You must choose between "all JS on" or "all JS off", and third-party browsers like Firefox are crippled because Apple forces all iOS browsers to use their WebKit engine under the hood. The myriad of Safari "content blocker" apps are also pretty dismal, and often expensive. So ad-bl…
This is what is keeping me from switching. Apple, if anyone is listening: allow a full Firefox browser on the iphone and I will switch in a heart beat
I'm always amused by calls for the breakup of the "unbearable monopoly" of Google, when it is itself the epitome of the Silicon Valley "monopolies need disrupting!" business model.
Except SV investors actively avoid competition with the monopolies. They will try and disrupt for sure, but there’s a dead zone around monopolies.
Uber, Lyft, Air BnB, Paypal, etc etc, would beg to differ.
I'm always amused by calls for the breakup of the "unbearable monopoly" of Google, when it is itself the epitome of the Silicon Valley "monopolies need disrupting!" business model.
Got a better idea? I'd like to see them bankrupt and all their data being wiped, but I'm afraid that's just not going to happen. Breaking them up is the only option we realistically have as of right now.
Even attempting to stay private gets you banned on most services.
Ran into this today logging into PayPal (the password-must-be-8-20-characters payment service) for the first time in a long time to buy a band t-shirt. After jumping through two different types of CAPTCHAs, now they require you share your phone number to log in. I contacted support via Twitter saying they have my email if they want to verify a login because I'm not comfortable with SIM jacking nor how data-mining is…
find thier [indie band] email and touch heads on how to mail them a fiver
Google had a brilliant advertising business with AdWords originally, where the ads were simply based on the search term and not a bunch of Orwellian surveillance on the person searching. From the research I've seen, all this privacy-invading crap doesn't even improve ad performance much - it's small incremental gains at best. And per this article, those gains are clearly coming at the expense of user trust and goodwi…
My opinion is that the target ads is just a cover, the real reason they want to track users is to give more data to their in-house AI system that learns what people do once they reach certain page. This knowledge (what people will do) is what is important to them, rather than simply showing certain ads. For example, if Google knows the profit potential of certain actions, they will raise the ad cost on that property…
If this was true then every single ad campaign would be worth it then, no? I thought that lots of people try Google or FB ads with a couple thousand dollars and never recoup operating costs. If Google knows how much profit a certain page could bring then they could also tell you exactly what to price your product at to maximize returns.
I'm pretty sure they're doing that to draw folks from AWS and similar.
Yeah, but you'd have to be a fool to go. Google has proven over and over again that they don't value customer support or long term maintenance. They will get bored and sunset services you depend on, or switch off your entire business because some employee sent suspicious email on his gmail.
Got a better idea? I'd like to see them bankrupt and all their data being wiped, but I'm afraid that's just not going to happen. Breaking them up is the only option we realistically have as of right now.
I think we should simply pass laws to make their business model illegal (at least the evil parts), and let them sort it out. If they go under because they can’t adapt, well tough luck. There will be tons of smart businesses, investors, and individuals eager to chase all the new opportunities the death of Google would create. And since the evil business models are illegal, the ones that come next will (probably) not b…
the dinosaurs ruled the earth for quite a long time, while mammals were squelched into a weasel-rodent protomammal skulking in the dark. after the extinction level event the mammals emerged from thier bunkers previously hidden from the purview of the dinosaurs. A new hope was born, the mammals were relieved of pressure and wandered the earth, and the day and diversified, then bought a penthouse in manhattan and took a job as a day trader investing in a large advertizing corporation,,,, [dejavoux]