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Comment by davb | Hacker News Reader

> The same reason Gmail can't work with end-to-end encryption--they want to advertise at you based on message content.

I wonder how they'd do if they were more open about it. "You're getting Gmail for free because we read your email and advertise to you. However, if you want to pay for a premium account (or Google Apps for Work) then we won't advertise to you, won't read your email and we'll even make end-to-end encryption easy and convenient".

I mean, it seems like a good compromise. I'd be happier with the rampant advertising and profiling going on if it was only for signed-in users and everyone was given the choice - use it for free or pay and get guaranteed privacy and no ads.

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It would be a (financially) bad choice for corpo. And answer why, is the same in many similar questions 'why can't corpo do this-and-that'.

Here it is (google as an example only, simplified) the answer:

* Put two googles side by side. competing.

* one is a current one, earning money from ads on you being product, and keeping it under the radar (although in fine print etc etc)

* second is the one devised: premium accounts plus free w/ads

* wait 5 years and observe by market efficiency evolution which of the (competing) companies wins. The first one. In this specific scenario, the second loses because time and money spent on 'premium accounts' will not be compensated by revenues from it. While at the same time, the first google, spending this capital difference purely on the ads department will make its ads department (here 100% of it) much better than ads part in second company. hereby winning on the market.

In general (as the google example is SIMPLIFIED, due to the alphabet scale. Please don't use google apps FOR WORK (emphasis mine ;) as an counter example - it's B2B product :) it is because: we, humans, don't like companies who use fine print etc, yet those companies win case by case with the 'moral, pure pricing and fine ethics' companies BECAUSE OF BIASES AND ERRORS (+) OF HUMAN BRAINS during choice making shopping, exploited day by day.

Thats why.

(+) read stupidity also known why-I-buy-overpriced-sweets-at-checkout ;)

That analysis only makes sense if that is the only product of the company. Google would still be spending way more on making ads better than a pure gmail competitor just because it shows ads for so many other things.

The wording "we read your email" isn't quite accurate. There is nobody at google who goes through davb's emails one by one.

Yeah, worse, he's being scored by highly imperfect algorithms.

In what way is it worse?

What if he's scored as a threat and reported to the FBI? A human can understand sarcasm, jokes, or hyperbole. An algorithm is going to see scary words and add them to the 'dangerous' score.

> What if he's scored as a threat and reported to the FBI?

Then he'll be referred to a human, who may or may not understand sarcasm, jokes, or hyperbole?

'May not' seems likely, we are talking about the FBI after all ;)

But they can. I doubt they do, because it's just not practical, but they do have the ability to

Right, but the phrasing above wasn't "We can read your email," it was "We read your email." What actually happens is more relevant than what they could do if they wanted.

I think if companies were fully transparent with what they're doing with the data and made sure almost all of their users knew exactly what they're doing with it (meaning, it shouldn't just be in a privacy policy no one ever reads, but it should be actively "promoted" somehow within the service, everytime the data is collected and used) people would be a lot more careful about what data they share through these services.

This is exactly why these companies don't want to be more transparent unless they absolutely have to (like what the EU is doing to Google), but it really should be more regulated by governments, because I think it's a very "fair" thing to do - sharing everything you're doing with someone's info. It's not about restricting the data collection through regulation, just being transparent about it. That might lead to less useful information for the data collectors, but people should be informed and it should trump everything else.

My intuition is that this will either lead to people going to other providers who do the same but do not mention it or lead to people not caring.

I mean, a large number of people here do know that machines scan their email. In what manner do the majority act? That shows us the revealed preference.

ads is a by product. The aim of google is to build AI. For training AI, it needs access to all the data about you. Maybe, google has already succeeded and the singularity has already happened ;-)

A by product of what? 86% of their profits come from advertising[1].

If that's not the definition of an ad company then I don't know what is.

[1] - http://adage.com/article/digital/google-q4-2015-earnings/302...

That is not the point. Money is just a mean. Read http://www.artificialbrains.com/google http://bigdata-madesimple.com/12-famous-quotes-on-artificial... http://mashable.com/2015/05/12/elon-musk-fears-larry-page/#1... http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2460571,00.asp .

Money is absolutely not a mean. Google is a public company. Money is its ultimate end.

There is a legal obligation to serve shareholders’ “best interests”. It is not exactly the same thing as either maximizing profits, or maximizing shareholder value. See http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-cor...

Because of people like you, I am able to strengthen my bullshit filter.

live in your own illusions

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