This breaks my google home.
I do not want Google to save 20 years of search history so I can use a stupid google home. For the first time I'm considering Apple's device.
This is a dark pattern Google
If you want that to change, you have to be willing to offset that price difference from your own wallet.
Why? Because it makes them even more money...
Apple have been hammering Google on privacy for many years and they have an incredible track record on privacy when they’ve had their feet held to the fire with the FBI.
Yes in a world of infinite possibilities anything can happen, but realistically Apple is incentivized to maintain their privacy position.
This is what the current leadership believes. Tim Cook is a clearly brilliant manager. I have no hesitation in endorsing his record on privacy (and genuineness and truthfulness). However, he is mortal. The next CEO might see things differently. The unique selling point you mentioned will be on the table. There will be analysts who will crunch the numbers on what portion of prospective Apple customers will refrain from buying Apple for some particular transgression and how much such transgression will bring in additional revenue.
Apple can fend off these questions today because it has a huge chunk of the high end phone market. It would be stupid to ask Apple to do this not because it is immoral but rather because it will distract Apple from doing what it does very well: selling $1k iPhones.
"Campaign targets Apple over privacy betrayal for Chinese iCloud users"
Apple sold all their users data in China. Should that not count?
Granted, that’s only a CEO change or two away, but the culture very much appears to be one where short term profit isn’t the be all end all.
I meant if they did not they have to leave China like Google chose to do. It was for a buck versus Google thought the bucks to give up their users data not worth it.
China.
Apple to China: What can we do for you, comrades?
China, on the other hand...
Not wanting to comply with a FBI request but then storing the iMessage private keys in Beijing.
Do purchasers of Apple hardware decide which "features" Apple should offer?
Do these purchasers decide what tradeoffs will be made between (a) not collecting user data (maximum privacy by design) and (b) collecting user data with the justification that a "feature" requires it (sacrafice user privacy as required by manufacturer's design)?
Apple's CEO calls privacy a "fundamental human right".
If by its design Apple hardware encourages or requires that right to be abridged (e.g. AppleID, AppStore, etc.), who makes the determination that the purchasers absolute fundamental right (hardware only, no data collection) is outweighed by the need to provide "features" that encourage or necessitate privacy tradeoffs (pre-installed software, ongoing "services", licenses to compile and install software, etc.).
Who decides when the "fundamental right" to privacy should be diminished to support a "feature" chosen by the manufacturer?
If there is (a) one type of hardware/software company that collects user data and sells advertisement, (b) a second type of hardware/software company that collects user data but does not sell advertisement, then is there (c) a third type of hardware/software company that does not collect user data?
What would be the most ideal company for the privacy-conscious consumer: (a), (b) or (c)?
My Apple health data is being used for science for instance, but I decided to opt-in and the data isn’t actually linked to me.
"Campaign targets Apple over privacy betrayal for Chinese iCloud users"
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy...
They sold all their customers data in China to the government so they could stay in China. Versus Google did NOT and instead chose to leave instead of selling the data.
'Campaign targets Apple over privacy betrayal for Chinese iCloud users"
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy...
Then removed the VPN software and cut their users off at the knees from being able to protect themselves. While the way to keep your data private in China is use Google Fi.
"Using Project Fi in China: Say goodbye to VPNs"
https://www.androidauthority.com/using-google-fi-in-china-85...
Have to look past marketing and what is real.
My biggest grip is Apple terms allow them to have a ton of your data but there is no transparency like with Google.
Google provides a dashboard with everytthing in one place were you can remove and download. Nothing similar from Apple.
So when I share my location with imessages how do I remove that? Where can I see it? Google is far better.
It's some time ago I checked, but I want to do a comparison and report to some naming & shaming site. Anyone knows a good one?
Consequently, I am never nagged by Google apps or social media apps. I just don't have any problems like what I hear other people experience. Particularly amusing is seeing that my inferred location is way off.I've been on Firefox nightly Android for eight months now. While generally the browsing is better than chrome thanks to ad blocking, the Google services are pared down versions for no reason. Search, finance, news, so many. This is a clear case of abusing market dominance - and not due to Firefox missing any feature. If not for the revenue from Google, Mozilla would have sued I think.
It's a shame because I'd love to ditch chrome.
Also, most likely you turning off tracking will impact your Google experience.
Google is different than Facebook in that they offer real value services without which you can't survive a day on the web. Just count how many times you rely on a Google service in a day. The least you can do is to support them in maintaining their ad ecosystem in return. Or be ready to pay for their servuces. Unlike Facebook, Google has never had a data breach/trust issue.
I would pay handsomely for Google Maps, but I have no such option. Again though, that is a service that works just fine without my individual data; they have my location and my search term, and any business that pops up is inherently relevant due to simple proximity.
Please do not call this entitlement. Please understand that my privacy is valuable to me. Please understand that I would gladly pay to keep it.
The world would be a whole lot different place (not necessarily any better) if Google services cost money instead of gathering data and selling it forwards.
A lot of people say this. You already can pay for Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, Photos, and YouTube. Are you paying for them?
Or, Drive storage by itself, which applies to most products with storage quotas such as Gmail and Photos: https://www.google.com/drive/pricing/
For YouTube, YouTube Red: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6305537
Another interesting experiment in the willingness of users to pay to remove ads is Google Contributor: https://contributor.google.com/
1. My Google identity is now my real email, the one tied to my real domain that I myself own. That's so much better. I can comfortably sign in/sign up with Google to other sites, have them tied to that email instead of my @gmail.com one.
2. I feel way more comfortable sharing every single detail of my life to Google. In fact, it turns what initially comes off as really creepy, into a useful life service because I'm now using things such as my map activity etc as a service I have a paid contract with Google for. And if I don't like it, I can hard disable the entire service.
3. I have access to a lot of stuff that regular free Google doesn't offer. Things such as undelete email/drive (which has been useful on a couple of accidental occasions), and, get this, support. Live chat and phone!
If only I could pay a monthly fee to include search and maps!
Also "G Suite's compliance with ISO/IEC 27018:2014 affirms our commitment to international privacy and data protection standards. ISO 27018 guidelines include not using your data for advertising, ensuring that your data in G Suite services remains yours, providing you with tools to delete and export your data, protecting your information from third-party requests, and being transparent about where your data is stored."
Where 'you' is a minority subset of the Internet population.
I am in the UK and use Google Search and YouTube. The only way to pay is with my data.
The difference that I see between FB and Google is that I would trust Google to get that right. I would expect FB to say they sandboxed or protected my data and then have it turn out in court in ten years that they did no such thing...
This is just not true.
There are viable competitors in about every space that Google is in. Use local documents and sync via a different storage provider. Alternate email providers exist. The only place where they have a distinct advantage is search, and even then, DuckDuckGo is usually enough (and if it's not, just pass a !g flag).
YouTube is also a thing, but I've never felt that having an account really gave me anything over just bookmarking channels.
Even if someone comes in and beats Google at some point, they will do it by hiring a massive number of talented people and buying large quantities of data centers and servers. Those things can only be paid for through advertising and tracking, as few people will directly pay for search services. I suppose a socialist/communist government somewhere in the world might have the resources to build a search engine of Google quality that doesn't rely on advertising, but they would have their own hostile agenda - that would be far worse than having to put up with Nike trying to sell you some shoes while you search.
If they grow too big Google will just switch them off..
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/4lgda4/duckduck...
[2] https://www.ghacks.net/2016/07/01/duckduckgo-yahoo-partnersh...
I was just objecting to the sentiment that opening a Google account is a requirement for being productive on the internet.
But that doesn't stop Google's insatiable need for personal data and stalking people. Android is designed to leak like a sieve.
And this is yet another example for those who continue to make the false argument that if customers paid surveillance would go away. On the contrary companies will then make money from both sources.
This 'free' is not demanded by anybody but is the business model of some startups to gain market share. The fact that there are no regulations means they can operate without any ethical constraints.
The Android platform itself is designed to siphon as much data as possible: contacts, pictures, locations, wifi hotspot information, etc.
If you think that you can avoid Google's greed for data just by not using GMail you are way way behind in the game and your misleading comment is harming others which might now feel safe using what is essentially a very evolved spyware OS. Sure, Google are nice and won't steal your credit card number and purchase stuff with it. They just take every bit of info they can get their hands on.
I’m sure the majority of people do rely on Google quite a bit. But not everyone.
Primary difference between them and Facebook is that I feel Google has a lot more transparency with what data they hold on you. With Google I just deleted all my account activity which is older than a week. Facebook gave me no such option, I even had to write a fucking 600 line python script using OCR to spam click delete buttons on timeline because there's no way to delete activity using the API.
I also agree with you that Google actually provides a service that Facebook doesn't. There's dozens of Google services I use on a weekly basis. I deleted my FB account because of privacy issues but leave my location on my Android for Google Timeline, despite them keeping a log of where I've been every second of my life I a) trust them more with that data than I trust FB to know my hair colour and b) I actually use that feature and think the payoff is worth it.
It looks more like poor engineering than a dark pattern.
Poor engineering and sensitive data are a bad combination.
To me it feels like they're deliberately making it painful when you minimise what you share with them.
They create things for the 99.9999% that don't care about privacy and will never touch those settings. When you leave that massive group, that's when bugs will be way more common.
We could argue that they intentionally only care about UX when you give them your data but then again that's capitalism, right?
They might have to give you choice to turn those things off, but nobody can force them to give you the same experience. Imagine any executive saying he will focus on giving a great experience for the users that they can't make money out of. He'll be out of a job very quickly.
Isn't that basically what GDPR says? You have to be able to opt out of anything, without breaking things except when absolutely necessary.
It's stupid to make such a wild proclamation, that, for example, only 70 odd people in the whole of the UK care.
For Google it's millions or 10s of millions of their consumers.
Best part is I don’t miss it at all, grew up before evil google, didn’t get to rely on their evil parts when switched away
Store personal information on a device and not send it to the mothership? Unthinkable!
Source: literally just tried it.
Where the history would usually be, there's just this nagging message:
> To see your home and work, past searches, and other suggestions tailed for you, turn on Web & App Activity.
...Which, as mentioned already, misleadingly implies that local-history features are difficult or nonstandard.
Some of this can be counteracted with local processing, but that's not really hardware efficient, e.g. you wouldn't consider running a Google instance on everyone's phone.
Breakthroughs in how we do computation could change this, but it would need to be a significant breakthrough, e.g. in homomorphic encryption and differential privacy or huge progress in compute/storage price/density/energy usage.
That being said, using cryptography to protect information will probably always have some (albeit constant) overhead over unprotected computation, so it may be true that these platforms will still be the "least intelligent" even though they are intelligent enough.
Apple does collect analytics, but those can be turned off in OSX at the very least. As a company, they are not currently geared towards data collection. They have publicly positioned themselves in favor of privacy.
They don't also fully encrypt all of that information and give it to government on request.
By being quite generic and broad in their targeting themselves, they can get away with just collecting non personal "OS data", and they do it since the 80s.
Their biggest enemy are companies that create an easier market for developers and businesses by passing down data that those businesses can use to reach users. FB getting into hardware (they will be a future competitor with AR) is possibly causing them sleepless nights.
Both companies have basically the same terms with privacy.
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/ Legal - Privacy Policy - Apple
More than anything I just want to be able to remove what Apple has on me as I want all my data in a single place when possible.
So I share my location with my family with Google Maps and do NOT want my location also to be at Apple for example.
But Apple is the worse like this. They are far less transparent than Google and that bugs me about Apple.
Plus considering Apple gave all their users data over to the China government versus Google fought the China government Apple has a horrible record with privacy and looks for a buck will give up your data.