Google: We never sell your personal information | Hacker News Reader

Google: We never sell your personal information

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19 pointsohmyblock16 comments

"…because selling it might enable competition. We rent your personal information, for only those limited marketing purposes, within our own managed markets, that further cement our monopolies."

Which is like the butcher telling me he won't sell animal carcasses, whilst displaying his fine selection of sausages for sale. Of course he won't, he is the one who uses them. He will sell me the sausages though.

Google is a data consumer, and from it they formulate products and services that they sell.

What a tasteless analogy..

I'm not sure what's wrong with it; many people find sausages to be quite delicious.

For a tasteless topic. I'm not about to pour sprinkles on a cupcake of eroding privacy.

It is a very appropriate analogy. You know that historically, you usually did not want to know what went into sausages. Kinda like FLoC, come to think of it... Just trust your butcher.

(Googler here, but speaking just for myself)

I agree with you but I will say that most of my non-tech-savvy family members think that the big companies are selling their data and that’s what they need to worry about.

It’s important that they understand the difference between the big companies which collect and use your data but keep it safe from others vs the little ones who buy and sell your data from a ton of shady operators and cause all your spam emails.

I'd agree that is an important distinction for Google to make.

Does Google limit where it buys from? That is, does Googly buy from "the little ones who buy and sell your data from a ton of shady operators" ?

Your family members might be wiser than you in believing that data owned by large monopolistic operators are not safe at all, and that Google is far from being above suspects of shadiness.

Little operators cannot do more then some harm: they are little, they possess relatively little data, they don't have the ability to capture a significant share of the aspects of my life. Google can, and can escape regulations on how such data can be used. This is what is really dangerous.

Luckily everyone else can be trusted with sensitive data:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/06/police-backd...

https://www.aclu.org/other/faq-government-access-medical-rec...

https://www.themdu.com/guidance-and-advice/case-studies/divo...

https://www.divorcemag.com/blog/are-medical-records-private

https://www.plaintiffmagazine.com/recent-issues/item/unrelat...

So let's just stop pretending that all the data Google has is even remotely problematic compared to the cases described above, supported by US/UK/EU governments.

Apparently disrupting someone's medical and/or mental health treatment is a perfectly acceptable way to deal with an unpaid traffic ticket. Using a woman's gynecologist and/or psychiatrist visits and what medication was prescribed is a perfectly valid argument to be used in alimony or child custody proceedings. It can apparently be used in simple commercial conflicts about unpaid bills too, or for eviction.

That IS the standard we are using. This is not "what might happen". This is what happens. This is what we have democratically decided is the protection afforded to private information. In other words: no protection whatsoever. Evicting a wife and kids because the husband got help for an alcohol addiction is how we ARE doing things.

Is Google/Apple/Facebook/... remotely problematic compared to that? No.

Just ...

Just no.

Are governments arguing the evilness of Amazon collecting information to suggest a birthday present for your niece 2 weeks before her birthday ... when they themselves send armed policemen into houses to take kids into CPS custody, to be rendered onto her ex (you know, doing it this way "to avoid trauma") based on the mother's medical file?

Yes. Yes they are. And let's not talk about the effects of that on kids, because if there's one thing such actions do NOT do, it's avoiding trauma in anyone. Even the fucking police officers are complaining it takes them days to recover from the screams of such children.

THAT is what we ARE using everyone's private information for.

See, this is the type of misleading prose people (Google included) use to confuse non-tech-savvy people.

There's a difference between

a) Keeping Google's users' data safe from being stolen from attackers (as in Google being hacked or having less restricted access to that data etc); and

b) Google collecting information about their users interactions with their properties (analytics, search queries, e-mail, etc) and partners, and selling it to the highest bidder or sharing it with third-parties or their partners.

Google's current narrative is mixing these two. And the whole point of the privacy debate is exactly the two points I've made earlier.

Google collect data about their users and they sell it PERIOD - it's that simple to understand.

It'd do wonders if people stopped misleading other people about this issue, especially the non-tech-savvy.

P.S.: And I'd say the same thing about any other company. I'm not against Google per se - I'm against any company that bases their bottom line on profiling people and selling that data.

Frankly, I don’t care if what they’re doing with my information is considering selling, renting, repackaging, remixing, displaying in an art gallery, or anything else. As long as they’re using it to try to shove more ads into my eyeballs I will do everything I can to deny them that information. As well as to prevent said ads from entering said eyeballs.

Dairy farmers don't sell cows, they milk them.

For specific values of never, sell, personal and information.

They will buy it tho.

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