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Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

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Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#81

Post by bagacrap »

ftlio wrote: post #49

Google search has become nearly unusable, while Microsoft’s core consumer products still seem OK - you can still install Windows 11 without a Live account through a workaround. I can run games on Linux and do work on a Mac. Search is still a problem, but I am increasingly turning to ChatGPT for searching anything non current event, with Bing increasingly. I was a full Google stack, Android, Home, TV, everything, for…

> Google search has become nearly unusable

This is a weird meme given how many billions of searches Google handles daily.

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#82

Post by _nalply »

Permit wrote: post #42
bastardoperator wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, I think this is also a bad take. Turn off telemetry, delete ChatGPT conversations, and I like having an LLM for GitHub versus Give us all your personal data and we're sharing it with ad partners, your personal data is our number one product and secondary products are only made to support the first endeavor.

> sharing it with ad partners, What do you mean by this? What kind of information do advertisers get to receive?

Corporate has data about people. For example, if you plan a holiday, Google, Meta, and others know it. If your wife suffers from a serious condition, Google, Meta, and others know it. Corporate has extensive databases and every person is potentially profiled with a lot of detail.

Advertisers don't usually receive detailed information, instead they are promised that their advertisements are targeted correctly. To do that the data about people is used.

But with this data Corporate gets too much power. Corporate needs to follow Human Rights, like states. One aspect is that there is no due process in case of conflicts, like someone being wrongly excluded from using a Corporate service. We also need transparency about how this data is used exactly and who else gets views.

Europe is trying to establish transparency with the GDPR, however is foiled by malicious compliance by Corporate. It does not help that Europe is clumsy.

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#83

Post by derefr »

dale_glass wrote: post #24
candiddevmike wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite valuable to vendors who are trying to gauge usage and interest, yes.

It's valuable to Microsoft, but why would anybody else want to pay for data about the usage of a Microsoft product? And why would Microsoft sell it? Like would you want to sell information like "X% of users can't figure out how to change the code formatting settings"? Or if you did learn something cool and useful, why would you sell it to the potential competition?

You know those preinstalled-but-not-really app ads that are in the Start Menu, for Candy Crush and the like? How much do you think those are worth — what's the right CPM for them? (And yes, these are adspace, with CPM costs — even if you never click+install Candy Crush from the start menu, you're still being reminded of its existence every time you open the start menu, so the impressions are valuable, not just the conversions.)

Microsoft knows the right CPM for these, because of their telemetry about start-menu usage. And while Microsoft isn't selling that information, per se, they are giving it to partners who consider running one of those ads.

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#84

Post by jvanderbot »

I've said this before, and until I said it the first time I thought the oldies who said it were just being curmudgeonly boomer types ...

It's all cyclic. One generations hero is the next's villain, and as we all move away from the villain we find new heros, those become villains as old heroes re-invent and we all move zigzag into the future.

Just look at what happened with compiled / static vs dynamic / "productive" languages from the 90s to 2030s. It's been less of a roller coaster and more of a pendulum.

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#85

Post by wiseowise »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #47
bastardoperator wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, I think this is also a bad take. Turn off telemetry, delete ChatGPT conversations, and I like having an LLM for GitHub versus Give us all your personal data and we're sharing it with ad partners, your personal data is our number one product and secondary products are only made to support the first endeavor.

> Turn off telemetry I may be working from old information, but doesn't Windows 10 still have unstoppable, and unauditable, telemetry?

The original comment was talking about VS Code, wasn't it?

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#86

Post by CoastalCoder »

wiseowise wrote: post #85
CoastalCoder wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turn off telemetry I may be working from old information, but doesn't Windows 10 still have unstoppable, and unauditable, telemetry?

The original comment was talking about VS Code, wasn't it?

I was speaking more generally about MS vs. Google.

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#87

Post by londons_explore »

derefr wrote: post #72
Retric wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What could do with your data to make more money that they aren’t? Sure in theory they could be selling access to anyone’s Gmail account to the highest bidder, but that’s going to lose them money by actively driving their customers away. Google may be actively harmful/evil, but they aren’t stupid.

Indexing and fingerprinting your browser history locally in Chrome, to generate a set of demographic and special-interest identifier tags, that are then attached to your Google account; where the special-interests are used by Google Ads to personalize the ad auctions, and the demos are used by Google Ads to price your CPMs.

But isn't that far better than what most competitors would do... Just upload all the data to a server and do ad-targeting there.

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#88

Post by yason »

jareklupinski wrote: post #39
throw__away7391 wrote: post #5

I generally avoid Google products, but I do not understand the animosity towards YouTube, nor why anyone would not just pay the very small fee for YouTube Premium and do away with all the ads. The content being created for YouTube is fantastic, you can easily watch news from all over the world, conference talks, lectures, interviews, in-depth documentaries and deep dive analysis that blows away anything you'll ever s…

> pay the very small fee for YouTube Premium and do away with all the ads because it doesn't do away with _all_ the ads: every video still has the video maker themselves talking about their 'sponsor' for at least a minute, reminding us to 'like and subscribe' for at least ten seconds, and a patreon scroll of users that have paid extra for another three minutes

These are two different things.

Youtube ads can potentially found in all videos and you don't really have a choice because there's no practical alternative to Youtube. So you either pay or use an adblocker (while it works). There's value in Youtube and I can easily see why would someone pay for the ad-free subscription.

Then again creators who choose to advertise or promote commercial products in their videos have a fraction of the leverage that Youtube has. If you don't like them, simply don't watch those channels and find something else. By choosing to promote products they'll implicitly choose to filter out some segments of their potential audience, and that's their choice. Youtube has nothing to do with that, they would place promotions in their videos no matter what service they use as their video outlet.

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#89

Post by its_a_random_ac »

slavapestov wrote: post #3

Times are changin’. All you young whippersnappers wouldn’t believe that back in my day, Microsoft was evil, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy, and Google was the scrappy upstart who prided themselves on not serving ads and irrelevant fluff on the search results page.

Great, now I'm thinking of my edgy teenage days calling them Micro$oft or just M$ on Gamefaq's forums.
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