Google reportedly peeks into Android data to gain edge over third-party apps
1–10 of 137 posts
Re: Google reportedly peeks into Android data to gain edge over third-party apps
#2why AB test when your competition can do it for you ... SMH come on google
Re: Google reportedly peeks into Android data to gain edge over third-party apps
#3Honestly is anyone surprised..
Re: Google reportedly peeks into Android data to gain edge over third-party apps
#4Honestly is anyone surprised..
If you fill a trough, pigs will come.
We have this saying in Germany about data collection. What it means is you can usually assume that given enough time, companies will do the worst with the data that exists, so the only reasonable approach is to never collect so much data in the first place.
Re: Google reportedly peeks into Android data to gain edge over third-party apps
#5Honestly is anyone surprised..
And isn't this done across all google services - those products that are comfortably run within millions of businesses - to gain valuable market insights / biz intelligence? Who knows.
Re: Google reportedly peeks into Android data to gain edge over third-party apps
#6>"The API doesn't obtain any information about in-app activity and our collection of this data is disclosed to and controllable by users"
Google is excellent at this kind of word maneuver, designed to confuse and mislead.
Google gets confronted about an egregious practice, and a PR representative responds with "well, we would absolutely never do [slightly worse unrelated thing]". This happens over and over again.
They get caught, MSM blindly repeats Google PR talking points with enormous spin and PR manuevering, and everyone forgets until the next scandal.
Re: Google reportedly peeks into Android data to gain edge over third-party apps
#7> collects sensitive Android user data
Looks like it’s basic metrics like how often the app is launched. It is not sensitive (user content of the apps would be sensitive).
It is an antitrust issue but barely a security/privacy issue.
Re: Google reportedly peeks into Android data to gain edge over third-party apps
#8> collects sensitive Android user data Looks like it’s basic metrics like how often the app is launched. It is not sensitive (user content of the apps would be sensitive). It is an antitrust issue but barely a security/privacy issue.
Call me old-fashioned, but if anybody knows when or how often I'm executing a particular program on my own hardware, that is a privacy issue.
Re: Google reportedly peeks into Android data to gain edge over third-party apps
#9> collects sensitive Android user data Looks like it’s basic metrics like how often the app is launched. It is not sensitive (user content of the apps would be sensitive). It is an antitrust issue but barely a security/privacy issue.
Call me old-fashioned, but if anybody knows when or how often I'm executing a particular program on my own hardware, that is a privacy issue.
It is 1/1000 of the issue of looking into other app messages and 1/1000000 of the issue of looking into other app messages by humans and selling it to unknown parties.
If we call every issue equally important privacy violation, one day we will overlook the one really important issue, which this issue isn’t.
Re: Google reportedly peeks into Android data to gain edge over third-party apps
#10>"The API doesn't obtain any information about in-app activity and our collection of this data is disclosed to and controllable by users" Google is excellent at this kind of word maneuver, designed to confuse and mislead. Google gets confronted about an egregious practice, and a PR representative responds with "well, we would absolutely never do [slightly worse unrelated thing]". This happens over and over again. The…
I have to say, my experience working with Google is that they actually resist the acquisition of information that's not in the public domain in a lot of ways. I've seen them fund another company's development team to do work, even buying the other company hardware for the task, just to avoid the data. I've seen them consciously exclude engineering tools you'd think are right up their alley, because the tools would acquire data which, while entirely in-scope and on-mission, could be considered too sensitive in some context.
If they're collecting this data, I strongly suspect they feel obligated to, maybe even compelled too. Possibly for purposes like app security, user security, OS security, user experience, etc.