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What I use instead of Google services

gabrielweinberg.com

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Re: What I use instead of Google services

#221

Post by rtpg »

joeclark77 wrote: post #174
jastanton wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it's more like going to your Dr appt and realizing they have a barista onsite... of course you're not going to tell the barista why you're going to the Dr, and the barista isn't going to know your full medical history, there is a pretty large separation of concerns there. Same applies to big companies. There are really big barriers up between services like there are between the Dr and the on site barista. To…

That may be true of doctors with coffee bars, but it is absolutely NOT true of Google. Google is an advertising company, period. All of the thousand things they do are for one purpose: to sell advertising based on getting better and better at knowing the customer and targeting ads you're likely to click on. Even if Google does say that some app is firewalled, the implied follow up is "...until customers stop caring"…

This is such a reductionist argument it can be applied to any action done by any group of people.

"Anything any company does is in the end goal to make money" is basically this argument. "Anything a university does is to get grants".

You're reducing the agency of people who work there and their personal objectives to nothing. Google has many different projects which aren't just about pushing ads . How are driverless cars selling ads? The cost of Google Fiber largely outweighs the advertising revenue. etc.

Re: What I use instead of Google services

#222

Post by rtpg »

astrocat wrote: post #130
GhotiFish wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truthfully. I would have no problem with the amount of data google aggregated on me, if I could depend on them not using that data against me, or to manipulate me, or to sell it to someone who would do either of those two. If someone came up to me and said "I'll give you 5 dollars if you give me the names, email addresses, phone numbers, and personal vulnerabilities of all your friends", agreeing to that would be con…

> the question is: do you trust google? This is too myopic of a question. Do you trust Apple? Do you trust Microsoft? Do you trust ____? There are arbitrarily many of these questions to ask. What really needs to be asked is: how can we establish levels of trust in companies and services that handle our digital information that approaches the level of trust we have in our direct, inter-personal connections? Not rattin…

>Trusting Google to not sell you out is a level of trust established... how?

It's trust from potential destruction. If Google was obviously using your email contents to sell you out, then people would stop using the service. It's like how people don't want to give out their email address to certain organisations out of fear of spam and phishing.

Google can't exist without that trust, so they're incentivised to act in a trustworthy manner.

Re: What I use instead of Google services

#223

Post by thomasfoster96 »

The problem that many people (me included) have with being tracked is usually that they don't know what's being tracked and/or how it is being used and stored. DuckDuckGo thinks that the solution is to stop tracking altogether, when really I'd be happy with just a search engine that was more transparent with what they were storing and using.

Re: What I use instead of Google services

#224

Post by skierscott »

spot wrote: post #216
skierscott wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tend to think of most "tracking" not as "stalking" but as "relationship building." I'm fine with relationship building. Google can give me better search results based on other activity they observe; I'm perfectly fine with that. They're simply trying to better their product for the user. What I'm not fine with is the fact that Google is an advertising company. We're not the end-users, we're the product. Intuition…

> Intuition says Google is selling the valuable information they collect to third-party advertisers. In this case your intuition has failed you.

You're right; I was wrong. It makes complete sense for an advertiser to say, "Sell adds to people interested in X" and for i.e. Google to show those ads.

Even for less reputable companies, it seems you're right: it makes more sense to sell ads for a keyword rather than to make the advertisers sort through a mass of data. Is that the case?

Re: What I use instead of Google services

#225

Post by snowwrestler »

mkal_tsr wrote: post #138
astrocat wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your interests, preferences, and proclivities are being used to make others richer. Your logic here villainizes a behavior simply because it benefits someone else. Let's say that every day you stop at Starbucks and order a cappuccino. The people who work at there recognize that you always show up at 8:10am and order the same thing so they begin to make sure it is ready for you every day so you don't have to wait. D…

It sounds like people are cross-discussing what they're really trying to get at the heart of, Tracking is a tool. It can be used for good and for bad. It has been used for good or bad. A healthy debate about the pros and cons and discussing choices one has with their tools/tech is vital to this. Tracking is an aspect of privacy, but it is not the entirety of it.

It would be great if that was the discussion, but it seems like many people consider tracking to be an absolute bad. Thus, any service improvement that might come of it is tainted by its association with tracking.

Re: What I use instead of Google services

#226

Post by snowwrestler »

avar wrote: post #4
dhragoon wrote: post #3

"Apple Maps"? This is shameless. Not sure how to reconcile that with the seemingly mandatory PRISM invocations, the post was almost stomachable up until the Apple cameo especially with the recent privacy headlines. At Least recommend something that isn't a huge downgrade in functionality, an OSM client or something. I'm sure that Apple adding DDG to Safari is the reason for this thinly veiled reciprocity. Privacy or…

I find it most interesting that he doesn't use some map provider using OpenStreetMap data because that's what embedded in the DuckDuckGo search results: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=amsterdam

Apple Maps does use Open Street Map data.

Re: What I use instead of Google services

#227

Post by icantthinkofone »

astrocat wrote: post #75

> "Like most people, I don't like to be tracked. I also am the founder of the search engine that doesn't track you, DuckDuckGo." It pains me to hear intelligent people talk about being "tracked" as something "bad" a priori. While there are certainly plenty of examples of abuse of knowledge, I tend to think of most "tracking" not as "stalking" but as "relationship building." Let me explain... Google is a service provi…

On point!

Re: What I use instead of Google services

#228

Post by icantthinkofone »

andersonvom wrote: post #190
sliverstorm wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If knowing that I prefer Ethiopian coffee helps my broker better serve me, I'd tell them in a heartbeat.

What if knowing you prefer Ethiopian coffee would make your insurance company charge you more because statistically these people are more prone to medical issues? Would you tell them in a heart beat? The pendulum swings both ways, and this is the reason why all of this should be opt-in.

Like many here, you are pretending that happens, and it doesn't. Too many are living that lie.

Re: What I use instead of Google services

#229

Post by icantthinkofone »

Interesting he uses Google Analytics as a "Google is tracking you" story when the real trackers are the companies that put Analytics on their web site. And all that tracking is now from a company they only bought relatively recently (Double Click) that had been tracking you long before Google bought them. But Google isn't the only company that does this and it's been done in far more places than just the web and not by Google and for decades.

Tracking you by marketing companies has been happening since I was growing up in the 60s. The only difference between then and now is it's also happening on the new internet thing. Everything else tracks you, too.

Re: What I use instead of Google services

#230

Post by zanny »

atonse wrote: post #108
eertami wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was satire because >I don't like to be tracked. >Phone OS: iOS, etc But now I think it is serious, if not highly deluded.

It's actually quite simple: follow the money. Apple makes little to no money by invading your privacy. They've already made money once you bought their hardware. Which is why they will be a much better champion of your privacy. However, companies like Google and Facebook make almost 100% of their revenue by knowing every detail they possibly can about your life. That's why they try to commoditize hardware and place a…

Just because it is not a primary revenue stream does not mean Apple lacks a profit motive to collect the data on their users.

They certainly do. And since I cannot audit any of their upper layer code for any of their products, I cannot have any faith that they don't.

At least with Android, I can get my own spin on AOSP like Paranoid Android.

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