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Comment by MattGaiser | Hacker News Reader

I am fascinated at the anti-Google attitude here.

Why exactly do you think some other home security company would not also use your data? Except they will secure it poorly with a default password.

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The position that a less sophisticated company with less integration into the rest of your live would be able to connect fewer lines with only access to your home security data doesn't seem that outlandish.

The claim that ADT or another large, established home security company is less capable of securing your data than Google requires evidence.

I don't want a company that makes its money selling information to advertisers to have such full access to my life.

I can tell you that Google does not sell your information to anyone. They horde all of their data so that they can sell advertisements targeting groups of people (scarily accurate groups) but they won't sell data on individuals as that impacts their competitive advantage.

Fundamentally, the reason I'd rather anyone but Google have my private data is Google's ability to use it effectively. Many companies can vacuum up data, few are prepared to do anything intelligent with it. Not only does Google have far more data, it's able to use it. That makes them way scarier than ADT.

I used to work on systems like this. The thing is there is a lot of data. But no effective or even interesting ways to use that data.

My guess they want to get into the 'home automation' bits. Which is a huge money sink and really not that interesting. They also need to be willing to do something more than on a 2-3 year time frame. I have things in my house that are 25+ years old. I zero plans on replacing them. My parents have a house that is 80 years old. They also have zero plans on replacing things. For the embedded market which is where ADT sits they need to be thinking 10-15 year time frames. They also need to think in the 'fail usable' state. If my internet goes out and I can not get my garage door open I am not happy and that thing will be on the way to the garbage bin. They also probably want in on that monthly recurring lease on equipment you do not really own.

I think when you combine data about doors opening and closing, security system status (home/away/stay) and existing data for location history and the like, it presents a lot more accuracy to people's routines, which can potentially be leveraged to sell ads.

I don't feel like that data is easily monetizable to a company like ADT, but is likely very monetizable to Google.

You get this data, much much easier and more reliable from IP and explicit position tracking on web and in apps

And cheaper too then trying to infer it from building out a huge home market. Smartphones are carried by everyone, and people are on them all the time.

HN commentators often have a naive idea that more data is always better.

Oh I do not disagree. It is just a tough field to actually extract any value out of. I would bet at this point most of these companies sell that sort of data to 3rd party already. It is probably buried in that tomb of a contract they give people.

There is a second possibility here. That no one is exploring. That Google is just investing money. Which means they have no effective way to use their existing capital. MS ended up at this position at one point.

Really? because there are many examples of smaller less sophisticated companies getting owned by hackers. ADT might not do anything with your data, but hackers have lots of uses for it.

So in your world, Google being able to sell target ads is more dangerous to you, then hackers getting access to your security cams or baby monitors, or stealing your personal dox and reselling them on darknet markets for bitcoin?

There are millions of people who have been harmed by identity theft from databases going around of people's personal info that have been hacked from less secure companies.

There was have been cheap IP cams that have had backdoors that were exploited, unbelievably, to build a search engine for readily available for pedophiles (https://ipvm.com/reports/the-search-engine-for-hacking-ip-ca...)

You have millions of people scammed by Indian call center scammers by taking advantage of terrible Windows security.

You have tons of scammers buying people's personal financial information from existing databases that are traded.

These are all real, palpable harm, where people have gone bankrupt, spent years cleaning up identity theft, had their children's room monitored by pedophiles and pranksters, etc

> You have millions of people scammed by Indian call center scammers by taking advantage of terrible Windows security.

You know where all of those scams come from? Targeted Google Ads... So yeah, Google being able to sell and target ads is extremely dangerous, especially when they enable ads to be targeted at vulnerable populations like senior citizens.

Funny story, the attack chain here starts with Google Ads, usually to push a Google Chrome extension in the Chrome Web Store, and then people end up letting a scammer onto their PC. And yet "terrible Windows security" is what you are worried about?

I have been asking Google and Googlers alike to address these concerns for years, and Google's movement on it is far too slow, because the systems they use are far too profitable to change.

> You know where all of those scams come from? Targeted Google Ads

No, quite a number of them are done via SMS and VoiceMail spam, e.g. Robocalls. What, you've never gotten a text or voicemail threatening you with a federal bench warrant unless you call up and pay money?

I've actually spent a very large portion of time over the past decade helping seniors deal with scams, and figuring out where they came from. I trace back every scam call I deal with to how they got to it. Google is the top offender. And malicious, scammy ads that push malware have actually been reinstated by Google only hours after I've gotten a Googler to take it down.

Here are screenshots of malware showing on the top search I see seniors search for, tested just now: https://imgur.com/a/rIAMjpM

Google sells scammers the ability to squat the trademark of a competitor, MapQuest (very likely illegal in it's own right, no ads are served on a search for "google maps"), which is commonly searched by senior citizens. The ad is barely perceptible from a real, organic result, and claims to be MapQuest. And the result is a page that only functions when you install a malicious web browser on your PC.

What's incredible here, is that you'll blame Microsoft for your company's ad platform, make MapQuest look bad (because you served a fake MapQuest site to people looking for it), and promote Google Maps and Chromebooks as an alternative... all while raking in the cash from the scam ads. Google is a business that operates on the revenue from scams. Every supposedly good thing Google does, and every paycheck it issues, is coming from ripped off individuals. The entire product cycle and marketing direction reinforces this.

This search term has seen nothing but malware and scams since at least 2013. If Google had any interest in protecting consumers (or not violating antitrust and, honestly, trademark laws), Google would not serve ads on this search term, ever. Feel free to investigate this internally, I am confident nothing will change.

> Google is a business that operates on the revenue from scams

I highly doubt these scams make up a significant fraction of Google's revenue. It is much more likely these are simply the failures of false negatives in automation falling through the cracks.

Besides the ad target scams, the Web itself is full of these scam malware sites. If you search for things to download, organic search results often send you links which eventually terminate in malware, especially true of searches for porn, software/music/movies.

I will raise this MapsQuest scam internally, so thanks for the report (note, I have nothing to do with ads, I work in research thats not ads related)

Probably nobody cares, and there's nobody in particular I would like to tell this to, but I recently experienced a Google service that made me feel more positive about them, even though I have eaten up the negativity recently to a certain extent.

That service is the call screening. Where you can (I'm not sure if it's standard on all Android phones, but I have a Pixel 3) have your virtual assistant talk to an unknown caller and transcribe whatever they say (but they always hang up).

It just made me momentarily feel so much better about Google, the sense that this one little thing actually improves my life by leveraging the dystopian tech infrastructure. I don't hate the bots that much, I hate them not working for me.

I just thought I'd share this because you must be bombarded with anti-Google stuff these days.

> the sense that this one little thing actually improves my life by leveraging the dystopian tech infrastructure. I don't hate the bots that much, I hate them not working for me.

The problem is, you have become part of the problem. Because the bot working for you is now annoying other people. Surely, you realize the companies that employ annoying bots all hate dealing with them themselves, but it improves their lives to subject you to them.

>you have become part of the problem

I don't think so, because to me the annoyance experienced by people who make unsolicited calls to me isn't important. It's not part of "the problem" from my perspective.

They are presumably being compensated.

"Everyone else is doing it too! So you can't be upset at us for doing it!"

That's terrible reasoning. Even if literally every company is doing it, we can still be upset that Google is doing it. Google has gone out of their way to collect broad amounts of my data in a way that ADT and other companies haven't - from an ongoing list of where I am and where I shop to what I search for on Chrome.

Yes, they did that. But it’s done in a way that gives you value as a customer.

You can argue about fair split of added value between company and user, but it’s not like users get nothing.

With nest cameras for example, what I personally get is really good AI to recognize people. I’m ok with that value exchange.

But it’s done in a way that gives you value as a customer.

Not in my experience. I tried really hard for a while to "buy in" to the Google ecosystem a few years ago. But the data accuracy was too low, the Google Location Services WiFi triangulation actually made navigation significantly less accurate, the Nest thermostat kept learning stupid patterns where it would turn my A/C down to 68 for like 10 minutes, then up to 82, just because of a couple of days with odd weather, they use dark patterns to trick you into enabling data collection features, Play Music makes it really hard to, you know, play my music, and they still keep discontinuing, breaking, or hiding features in apps like Maps. Last time I was going somewhere it took me ten minutes to figure out where they'd moved Offline Maps.

Based on the time of day of the posts, I'm guessing the majority of the anti-google sentiment is coming from Europeans. They are generally distrustful of large American corporations.

There are plenty of Americans who distrust Google and large American corporations, too. I don’t trust any entity that exists for the purpose of vacuuming up as much of my data of possible.

Sounds like you're advocating for robust consumer rights legislation on data collection.

Fear. Fear of yet another vector that Google could use to connect the dots of their life.

Belief that Google's business model is incompatible with security/privacy.

Unfair criticism that Google will just shut down any service/offering once they get bored --- it doesn't happen to pay services.

The majority here don't talk about security. They talk about privacy. Google's business model is incompatible with privacy.

I'd agree -- privacy is the right term here.

Privacy is an integral part of security. The terms have just become disassociated due to those who use the refrain of "security" to mean their security at the expense of your security - eg airport molesters.

Why would an advertising firm want to get into home security?

Their diversification is dubious, hence the push back.

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