Google's plans usually have carefully laid out technical justifications, and are mostly kinda boringly/obviously good, like QUIC/HTTP3. That you're usually skeptical of any plan coming from Google suggests that your skepticism is miscalibrated.
Google's plans being usually "obviously good" is a highly subjective opinion.
That doesn't mean that AMP is a great idea.
I think we have to be be pretty naive to believe this is event remotely true.
> And Google's employees have a large incentive to not see any issues with collecting all the personal information that exists.
I can only speak from personal experience. But I would not agree.
Collection of data needs to be covered in a privacy document. You must argue why you're collecting it. There has to be a retention plan, such that data is purged when the user account is deleted, and/or the data expires over time.
You can of course get exemptions, IF there is a valid business reason. But all of this needs to be reviewed and approved by privacy people.
If you want to get things done. The paperwork is a strong incentive to avoid keeping data you don't need.
Note. privacy reviews cover more than I mentioned here. This was just a highlight.
For an ad revenue driven business, that’s a pretty big exception.
Ad targeting / re-targeting benefits from a richer picture of the user’s personal life choices. Maybe only a couple percentage points, but every % of a billion adds up.
The paperwork is a modest incentive to avoid keeping data Google doesn't need. The problem is that what people need is not necessarily the same as what Google's surveillance and manipulation profit machine needs.
I don't need Google to keep a hyper-detailed record of every site I visit, but Google's business model means that they "need" to do it. So they do.
>> And Google's employees have a large incentive to not see any issues with collecting all the personal information that exists.
You see, Googlers are incentivized not to see the ethical catastrophe that is collecting the data they "need" to collect in order to implement and enhance Google's surveillance and manipulation profit machine.
Sure, if some data are irrelevant to the surveillance and manipulation profit machine, there is a modest incentive not to collect those data. The problem is that Google "needs" a great deal of highly personal, sensitive data whose aggregation poses societal risks that can hardly be overstated. But, since Google--and therefore, Googlers' salaries, bonuses, and RSU gains--"needs" those data, Googlers are incentivized to rationalize its collection, aggregation, and exploitation.
It's easy to make proposals that incrementally increase user security while simultaneously increasing one's own ability to consolidate and exploit user data. Technical appeal needs to be evaluated with a simultaneous critical eye to social impact (QUIC is a perfect example -- it outcompetes TCP on an equivalent link, and falls apart over variable-latency or highly unreliable connections, like those that exist in developing nations -- but of course, Google doesn't care about those audiences).
Google doesn't even care if you're a paying customer -- they sell phones without expandable storage with the explanation that customers should just use the cloud (i.e., Google Drive) instead.
Laughable.
It was just an example in support of the point made in the parent: as far as Google is concerned, the only people that matter are ones with unlimited, fast and reliable Internet access at all times without exception.
If you thought I was facing some kind of dilemma regarding whether or not to buy a phone that is useless half the time I leave my house, then thank you, but that's not the case.
Do you have a citation for your claims? There is plenty of evidence to the contrary: https://www.blog.google/technology/next-billion-users/ .
Still, ISPs are definitely higher up on the evil-o-meter.
Browser vendors generally try not to break millions of webpages overnight.