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Comment by dcow | Hacker News Reader

But why should Google be allowed to share your data but not ISPs? Not that I love this move but the reasoning does resonate, or at least make me question if the former law really did anything at all or if FB/Google lobbied it through to stifle competition.

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1) Yes, Google has a lot of services, but you can avoid them. Admittedly it's challenging but it's doable. For many Americans, choosing a different ISP isn't "challenging" so much as "impossible".

2) Google doesn't sell your data to third parties. This is a big one. They make money by showing you ads and reporting to the advertisers that they did it. Nobody else gets access to your data, and Google goes to great lengths to lock it down and prevent unauthorized access. Do you trust every company your ISP will sell the data to?

3) Google itself has ways to opt out temporarily for highly sensitive things, like with an incognito window. Can't do that with an ISP.

4) You generate a lot of traffic that Google has nothing to do with. Do you have an iPhone? Do you use a laptop other than a chrome book? Have a gaming console? Use a non-chrome browser? Your ISP will inhale all of this.

Great points. I'm personally tying to avoid Google services as much as possible, but I guess I was thinking in a more general context. Even so, your points still stand. (Small obligatory remark: incognito is entirely client side.)

The silver lining might be, considering your ISP can now access your data, that maybe the culture will shift and people will take online privacy a little more seriously, both applicastion and services providers and users. Maybe people will stop sending user analytics in plain text all the time. Maybe people will expect tls everywhere. Maybe a layer 3.5 overnet will emerge..

False equivalence.

Google doesn't share or sell your information. This is a common misunderstanding. No advertiser can identify you individually. Rather you're an anonymous part of a large group with certain characteristics specified by the advertiser. Google also allows you to opt out of targeted advertising. Finally, Google's philosophy is that it will release PII data of its users over Google's dead body.

In comparison, ISPs can share "precise geo-location, financial information, health information, children’s information, social security numbers, web browsing history, app usage history and the content of communications”.

There are powerful financial interests at work here. I think this is going to be a common way to swerve the conversation away from the heart of the issue.

Disclaimer: used to work at Google.

It might also be another thing if major ISPs didn't have protected monopolies and we could speak with our money. But most of us can't.

Not trying to swerve any convoys more just trying to figure out how the head of the FCC could possibly in any way rationalize this without assuming loads of money changing hands. Sigh.

By choosing to use Google you agree to their privacy policy and terms of use. Most people don't have the choice of ISP, they are stuck with the one their city allows in their neighborhood.

Also, stop using Google as a distraction.

Google is a de facto monopoly.

No, it's really not. There are alternate search engines like duck duck go and bing, alternate email providers, photo sharing services, etc etc.

There were alternate operating systems in the 1990s, but Microsoft was still found to be exercising monopoly power.

It's not a distraction think of the question as a general: why should service X be allowed something that service Y is not? There are still really good reasons why X != Y (or conditions that would cause seemingly equivalent X and Y to be evaluated differently). Perhaps the FCC needs more education on the subject. But more likely there is absolutely no rational rationale behind this action.

Last I checked, I pay my ISP over $50 a month for their services - services they happen to have a monopoly on in my area. Comparing them to a free website is absurd.

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