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Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

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Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#51

Post by wizzwizz4 »

andrewinardeer wrote: post #40
Kye wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a story from someone at Google about someone who emailed them with a number every once in a while, and the number kept going up. They finally figured out it was the size of the Google home page, and the person was making sure they knew when it was getting bigger. It was something small, but big for the time. It's now almost 1MB zipped.

I thought it was the number of characters on their homepage that was emailed to them, not the size of the page in mb.

There was a time when the number of characters was the sensible metric.

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#52

Post by bodge5000 »

mrjin wrote: post #30

I really missed the days when Yahoo! was the first choice search engine, the results were hand picked by human, limited but really relevant. Then came google, the results were much richer but relatively inferior, however still acceptable. Years later, Gmail was out and I immediately expressed my interest and got invitation directly from Google. Unfortunately, Gmail did not workout for me. From the very first day, I s…

From what I've read about them, and how they are now, I highly doubt a future with yahoo would be an improvement.

They actually have quite an interesting history. From what I can remember, they refused to brand themselves as a tech company to avoid Microsofts wrath (Microsoft of course used to be a lot more aggressive with competition than we see today) and subsequently failed to attract the best engineers.

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#53

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #45

As a web developer, the AMP story is notable. On many HN comment-threads people complained that AMP pages were in fact a lot slower than the alternatives they could do, and undesirable in other ways too, and AMP didn't seem to be achieving Google's stated goals for it. Either Google has ulterior malicious motives, people posited; or perhaps is just inertially stuck enforcing something that didn't work out how they in…

I have some nontechnical friends who deeply distrusted and disliked Google. But I always believed Google’s “don’t be evil” line. I’ve learned a lesson.

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#54

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

dmitriid wrote: post #36

It's not even the beginning of an end game. We're in midgame, at most. 10 years ago Ars Techinca published the evergreen article called "Owning the stack: The legal war to control the smartphone platform": https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/09/owning-the-stack... At the time it explained, with great accuracy and insight, all that was happening in smartphones: all the visible and invisible wars and battles to co…

Remember when we thought Microsoft was evil, and Google was a force for good?

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#55

Post by iso1210 »

kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #47
blackhaz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest assaults is Google Classroom. My son goes to a school in London. He was given out a Chromebook. His Chromebook effectively became his backpack. Everything is in there. They do homework there, collaborate, get used to the "G Suite." Paper is citizen number two. He spends a good portion of his day in Google's ecosystem. I thought Microsoft dominance twenty years ago was scary, but this is something o…

It was always a great part of Apple’s playbook, back in the day. Train the kids.

Microsoft did that in the late 90s onwards, technology == MS Office for an entire generation.

However the extent of ecosystem in the 80s and 90s is different to the extent today.

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#56

Post by iso1210 »

pibechorro wrote: post #48
dtech wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what we should've done. Google for a long time won users by making almost objectively better products. It's only in the past decade or so that they started to abuse their monopoly. Putting the blame at government failing to enforce existing and create new anti-trust legislation seems much more sensible than blaming users picking the best products.

Not a monopoly. They are dominant. Start using duckduckgo and other similar sevices. The internet is still a free market. If you continue to use their products you are just whining. Become the change you wish to see in the world.

How do you avoid google classroom when the school demands you use google classroom?

This is the same principles as the Microsoft monopoly of the 90s and 00s, and that at least gives me hope

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#57

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

samizdis wrote: post #2

In hindsight, I find it hard not to feel complicit, having invited friends and family to Gmail back in the day when invites were a thing. I had actually believed Google's "don't be evil" line, when it launched what was a brilliant stripped-down search product. (And yes, I defected from AltaVista with the crowd. Oh, how I miss case-sensitive queries; how I miss all those relevant results.) I was far too gullible.

same here ... even further back I belonged to those people who congratulated their parents for joining facebook and whatsapp - so cringy. now I myself am using neither of those services any longer. feels good on one level but also futile on a deeper.

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#58

Post by robin_reala »

vincnetas wrote: post #43
rightbyte wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data does not have to be easely portable though, right? I.e. they can send human readable data that can't be directly translated back to its original form.

no, it must be computer readable. you cant print and mail your data export. When the processing is based on consent or a contract, the individual can also ask for you to return their personal data to them or transmit it to another company. This is known as the right to data portability. You should provide the data in a commonly used and machine-readable format. https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-custo…

Yep, see this classic HN thread on Spotify and SongShift: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24764371

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#59

Post by wizzwizz4 »

mission_failed wrote: post #25
swiley wrote: post #3

Do not use software that you cannot self host.

Except Google and Microsoft have screwed up email so that self hosting is a never-ending game of 'who will they block today?' You can't run a business where the 2 companies that control the vast majority of email can block you for no reason, and absolutely no visibility that something is wrong until a customer directly contacts you that they are not receiving email (and how would they even know in most cases unless t…

If you have the right kind of business, you can tell your customers that it's Google and Microsoft's fault (“they want to keep people on Gmail so they keep blocking everyone else”) and suggest using another email address “while you get it sorted” – they might just do that.

Of course, that is risking significant amounts of money out of your own pocket just for a stupid nerd turf war…https://xkcd.com/743/

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#60

Post by syshum »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #49
syshum wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it highly ironic that in a thread about subjective evil one talks about granting more power to governments... The only institution on the planet that has granted itself the right to legally steal, plunder, and murder you... I am no fan of Google, but as much as I despise what google has become, I am do not have a rose colored view of the evil that is government to the point here I think that government could b…

> The only institution on the planet that has granted itself the right to legally steal, plunder, and murder you... Rights that, legally, only have validity if people want them to. (In theory, in some countries.) In principle, Google is allowed to ignore the will of the people; in principle, the government is not.

None of that is true, in fact it really is opposite.

Google has to entice people into voluntary exchange, yes the power is imbalanced but it is possible to remove yourself from google, thousands have. You can not remove yourself from government, if you try they will kill you. Google will not kill you if you stop using their services

if I disconnect from my city utilities, if I stop paying taxes, if I grow an unapproved plant, if I do anything the government does not like well men with guns show up...

Further this idea that the government is beholden to the will of the people, even in the ever lauded (and seldom understood) "democracy" is provably false, many many studies have been done that prove the will of the people hardly ever changes the will of government so I am not sure what factual factual basis you have to claim that governments must follow the will of the people.

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