As magicalist points out in his response, you are taking Schmidt's quote completely out of context. Don't feel bad, you're not the only one. Schmidt (and Google) are extremely pro-privacy and against sharing information with the government. Google must have like ten lawsuits going on at all times on the entire planet trying to fight intrusive data request from governments. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars e…
Android is becoming less and less open source by the minute. Google used the opensourcedness as a trojan horse to get the OEMs, but now it's pulling it away.
> Schmidt (and Google) are extremely pro-privacy and against sharing information with the government. Privacy doesn't mean "don't share my data with the government". > They spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to prevent governments from gaining access to their data Funny how you say "Google are extremely pro-privacy" and then describe the vast amassed personal information of users as "their data", referr…
You seem to think that "pro-privacy" is equivalent to "don't collect any private information". It's not. Not at all.
So then why does Google collect my private information, if they are "extremely pro-privacy?"
You're going to run out of superlatives by the time you reach DuckDuckGo.
I'm repeating myself (from other threads) but Mozilla should use this sales pitch. Very few users can evaluate business' privacy practices; they only can trust the business. Due to their non-profit, public good status, their mission, and their track record, nobody could compete with Mozilla on trust. EDIT: I'll add: Certainly the other two leading browser makers couldn't compete, and in mobile platforms only Apple, i…
Does Mozilla's track record include their suggested advertising tiles on your newtab page, based off your browsing history? Or their defaulting to Yahoo to send your searches because they were the highest bidder? Now yes, they say the tiles are based on your local history and not transmitted anywhere; so it's not as bad (I don't care if other people don't see it, I don't want my data mined even locally for the purpos…
> Maybe what we need is a crowdfunded browser, where the company listens to their users and has no conflicts of interest.
Then "just" collect enough money for Mozilla so that they don't need other sources of income
It's funny how Google advocates always "bash" apple for being "closed source" when this company ships the most popular Unix in the world... and all of their products, even the watch, are based on it. Yes, they do keep the Application/UI layer closed source, but so does google ("Google Apps"). Yet google has spend years propagandizing that they are "open" while Apple is "closed" and that plays right into the latent de…
>It's funny how Google advocates always "bash" apple for being "closed source" when this company ships the most popular Unix in the world... and all of their products, even the watch, are based on it. Android ships far more units than OS X/iOS and their derivatives do.
Android is not UNIX - it's GNU[0]/Linux-based, which is UNIX-like. iOS is also not UNIX, which is based on OS X but not UNIX Certified. OS X is UNIX.
I'm repeating myself (from other threads) but Mozilla should use this sales pitch. Very few users can evaluate business' privacy practices; they only can trust the business. Due to their non-profit, public good status, their mission, and their track record, nobody could compete with Mozilla on trust. EDIT: I'll add: Certainly the other two leading browser makers couldn't compete, and in mobile platforms only Apple, i…
Does Mozilla's track record include their suggested advertising tiles on your newtab page, based off your browsing history? Or their defaulting to Yahoo to send your searches because they were the highest bidder? Now yes, they say the tiles are based on your local history and not transmitted anywhere; so it's not as bad (I don't care if other people don't see it, I don't want my data mined even locally for the purpos…
The huge difference is that they are completely upfront about it, turning it off is trivial and requires no digging into settings as the switch is right on that page, what they do with your data in terms of the tiles is entirely open source, etc. Plus, the default search engine is paid everywhere. Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, etc all pay for placement in browsers. Users are free to select whatever browser they want in good browsers.
Everyone seems to be Apple-bashing, and ignoring the fact that Apple really don't make money out of your private information. They make cash out of selling devices. So their interests are more aligned with yours. You may have noticed that Google don't make their money out of selling hardware. So they make it through other means. This is really inarguable, regardless of whether you think Apple are using that for marketing or whatever.
Personally, I'm happy to pay a company with a sound business model that doesn't rely on advertising (and by proxy your private information).
How on earth some of the other commenters arrived at their worldview, I have no idea. Unusually close-minded for HN. A lot of Google employees, perhaps?
> Schmidt (and Google) are extremely pro-privacy and against sharing information with the government. Privacy doesn't mean "don't share my data with the government". > They spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to prevent governments from gaining access to their data Funny how you say "Google are extremely pro-privacy" and then describe the vast amassed personal information of users as "their data", referr…
You seem to think that "pro-privacy" is equivalent to "don't collect any private information". It's not. Not at all.
You seem to be operating with some Newspeak definition of privacy.
Privacy is seclusion. Ruffling through someone's dirty laundry, but keeping all the findings to themselves is not "pro-privacy".
I was shocked at the amount of registration info a new mac asks for. Haven't bought one since.
You can skip it
It's disingenuous to ask for it in the first place when one touts itself as a privacy advocate. Vast majority of users will do what they are told to do by default and Apple knows and exploits that.
How, exactly, has Google's collection of personal information contributed to identity theft? I suppose, on paper, you're more vulnerable to Google employees or contractors using internal access to steal identities, but is that a problem in practice (if so, I'd love pointers)? Or are Google's internal security measures and controls effective in preventing it? Meanwhile, Google's done more than most companies to protec…
I think you completely misread what I said. The downside of a company collecting data is the risk of what happens if that data leaks. There was an example of a very popular site here in Australia being hacked 3 years ago that only just notifed customers (of which I was one). Credit card numbers and other PII data was stolen. I had to dig through credit card transaction list and there is still the ongoing concern of i…
The risk of you being personally targeted and hacked is greater than Google being hacked. The only entity I'm concerned about that might access Google's data is the US government. OTOH, If you don't trust Google with your data, I don't see how you can trust anyone else - at that point you might as well be writing your own PGP implementation.
It's too bad the debate here has turned into a huge Apple vs Google thing when it's really a story about not letting the government strip away people's privacy and ability to properly encrypt their data. Like really, we get it you might not like iOS or OSX, but it's not about that right now.
It's too bad the debate here has turned into a huge Apple vs Google thing when it's really a story about not letting the government strip away people's privacy and ability to properly encrypt their data.
But these issues are not independent. Full end-to-end encryption is not acceptable to Google in the short term, since it would mean that they have to store or transmit data that they cannot profile.
This has two consequences: 1. end-to-end encryption is less important to Google and they'll be less inclined to fight governments' attempts to strip away the right to do end-to-end encryption; 2. having data unencrypted data at rest[1] makes it easier for government agencies to request and use that data.
[1] The whole 'data encrypted at rest' thing seems to be doublespeak to me. Their storage backends may only see encrypted data, so it may protect against storage server theft, but as long as they also hold the encryption keys it's only marginal security against hacks and the government, and no protection against the cloud providers themselves.