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Comment by tempire | Hacker News Reader

This is hilarious, considering the hard time German government gives Google in terms of privacy.

Why? Google is some outside entity from another country. Do you find it hilarious that I discipline my kids but it would probably result in a physical altercation if someone else whom I didn't place in authority (explicitly or implicitly like the schools) did?

Granted, I wouldn't want to be live under a government that thought of me as "belonging" to them [1] but their stance here isn't remotely hypocritical.

[1] The US government does as well though. The US is the only country in the world where you if you sell everything you have in the US and move away to a new life they still expect you to pay them taxes on what you earn in the new country.

But it’s FUD. It’s a smokescreen.

Google is harmless compared to the power nation states have. It’s just wrong to focus your effort on companies and not states. What politicians try to do is make privacy all about companies and not the state and that is, honestly, disgusting. All their gushing about Facebook and Google only serves to hide their own failings.

I disagree. The bigger the company gets the more influence it is likely to have on one or more states. Both corporations and governments are dangerous and should not be trusted with privileged information.

Sure both. But nation states are far, far, far more dangerous.

It's both. Google gets (ab)used by the US government at least; here is a high-profile case, where they fought the secrecy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3096888. Governments are asking for warrantless wiretapping, and the centralisation of data by large corporations where the user doesn't control it is too tempting a target (see the AT&T/NSA retroactive immunity scandal for another example).

Well, it is the job of the government to govern their country, so it's not that strange they also want to govern companies affecting their country.

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