That's not a company whose products I want to use anymore. Not for email. Not for search. Not for a thermostat. Not for a realtime JSON database. And not for listening in to all the data in my house.
That's not a company whose products I want to use anymore. Not for email. Not for search. Not for a thermostat. Not for a realtime JSON database. And not for listening in to all the data in my house.
While I can't say I disagree with your point on Google's incentives being exactly the opposite of absolute privacy, you're clearly in a tiny, tiny minority. Even assuming that the majority of users simply aren't aware of this (which is a faulty assumption in my opinion), there are many (myself included) who have simply accepted this and go about our lives, preferring to have a simpler, easier to use life than obsess over every single privacy concern.
In my experience, the people who "don't care" (as opposed to simply not understanding the insanely complex topic) are the people who:
1) benefit from it, e.g., SaaS/startups heavy on analytics, and
2) lack the context to understand that the current state of Western civilization is not in any way immune to regression, and
3) don't understand how their own actions can in fact induce that regression by creating a high-value turn-key totalitarian system ready for the taking, and
4) don't understand that their actions are already serving this purpose in more totalitarian states outside of the USA.
That's even ignoring the implications of __massive__ information asymmetry when it comes to negotiation between corporations and individuals.
I agree with everything you say and I still do business with Google. Let me go through your list.
1. No. Not me.
2. I hope I'm not that naive. I've made similar arguments to other people in related discussions.
3. Yep. I understand this.
4. Also true.
So - I understand those things and agree with you and I still do business with Google et al.
The thing is I also drink, fail to exercise, drive a petroleum-consuming vehicle and recycle poorly.
I do many other things that harm myself directly or perpetuate or accelerate trends in society I perceive as negative.
You might consider this apathy and that is probably true to some degree.
But I am also running a continual cost/benefit calculation on every action I perform.
Some of my conclusions are out of whack and some are frankly irrational but the list of things I consider every moment of every day is extremely long and I've decided that the cost vs benefit of doing business with Google is in my favour. I've evaluated the costs you set out above and decided they fall far enough down my list that I'll tackle them at some point after I've started jogging and voting, stopped drinking scotch and begun regularly volunteering at my local worthy cause.