Google just launched three new photography apps
theverge.com
theverge.com
And given that it's "garage-style" "experimental", etc, these tools will probably have the lifespan of a firefly, to be Konmari'd away just after getting an ardent following from the never-sufficiently-many devoted users.
But I won't be one of them.
This would greatly encourage people to keep all their photos in the cloud, tying them to the Google ecosystem and giving Google plenty of data to munch on, at the detriment of user experience.
This is at the best Google's "user/product study" to figure out if a product concept is worth developing further, but if you don't have a smart plot and meaningful conversation generation in the comic-gen-app, you won't be able to understand the actual reception of such a concept and risk killing a good idea pre-maturely.
But hell, why would theverge cover apps for the purpose of user study testing from Google.
It has to monetize on these somehow or someway?
Are they trying to get us addicted to taking photos and videos?
Very confused.
No, everyone likes taking pictures already.
What they want is that all those random snaps and associated metadata should be stored on their servers. That's something even the Stasi would never dream of, but we're fine, because Google promised to do no evil some time ago, and Facebook is doing the same thing.
Our democratic principles cannot dis-allow him to contest. At the same time, imagine a rouge group of developers within FB, guided by Zuckerberg, digging dirt on political opponents and info-sniping anyone in his way to power.
Google might have browsing habits, purchasing habits and perhaps emails (though who, especially young people, communicate their thoughts through email?) but FB has peoples thoughts, political leanings, influence of news on their world outlook, detailed data on how to manipulate them, what angle of a piece of news will best influence them, their personal lives, their friends, family and acquaintances, their dissent, their passions and a very detailed timeline of their lives.
And they also have detailed real time analysis on chats in WhatsApp, browsing habits, detailed biometric information, GPS location details and what not.
We have a lot more to fear from FB.
Imagine how useful that info and power will be to a politician.
Imagine, as a retaliation against European Anti-trust and data security issues, FB delays implementing tools to fight Russian social media influence in Europe for a few weeks before election?
Imagine FB using AI to automatically change news stories to feed off the leanings of it's audience.
Imagine FB preventing flow of atrocities within communities.
Imagine FB covertly publishing dirt on people trying to investigate it.
If FB went rouge, is it possible for the current political and media systems to really counter its onslaught?
The whole world should be afraid of FB. It has too much data and too much power. Its the one true cult.