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Comment by rbarooah | Hacker News Reader

The fact is, that was nowhere near enough notice for me to exit all the services I've been using with Google since 2003.

I had:

Gmail Apps for Domain (3 domains) AppEngine Calendar Reader Analytics Docs Voice Picasa

...and probably a bunch of others I haven't noticed.

I'm down to:

AppEngine Reader Analytics

I'm most of the way through exiting, but I still haven't had time to move AppEngine ones even though they little more than static sites.

I don't know of a decent alternative to Reader since most of the Apps seem to use it as their backend.

Analytics is easily replaced.

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Their "new" privacy policy isn't really new, just tweaked. Google's been doing business the same way they are now for years. If you just suddenly decided you needed to divest and you couldn't get that done in a month or two... were you sleeping the whole time, or did you just not realize they were using your demographic data the whole time? AppEngine notwithstanding, moving from the other services could be done in one weekend, and Google makes it pretty easy.

Nowhere near enough notice? It's like someone told you that you live in a flood zone and you didn't realize you've been standing in water for almost 10 years already.

It's nowhere near enough notice to take reasonable action.

You say it could be done in a weekend. Do you know this because you've done it?

To do anything other than an emergency exit, you need time to evaluate and select alternatives, and that doesn't include things like GMail, where there needs to be an overlap for people to update my address etc. (yes I used my own domain - no google didn't make it transparent enough that my gmail address didn't leak out).

As for the flood zone analogy - that's absurd. At some point along the way I'd have had to decide I was going to stop using them. In my case that point is now.

You seem to be suggesting that it should have been before now, and that a change in terms and conditions isn't a reasonable indication of their future direction.

Consider that Google's could have changed their T&Cs in the other direction - to commit to greater segregation of user data had they thought this was important.

They didn't.

So lessons learned:

Exit strategy. Even if you don't plan on exiting, always have options ready.

Diversity: Using a single vendor for everything is convenient but not always best practice.

Reading the privacy policy: Google has been doing data collection almost since they started. The only thing different now is they have one privacy policy and one set of data for all their products.

I understand that some people may not be comfortable with what Google does, but this new change isn't giving them more access to your data, it's just merging their products into one. If this is the catalyst for dumping Google completely, I'm not seeing why it shouldn't have been earlier unless you just didn't know they're an advertising company.

Also, I'm curious: why would they try to segment their products further? What benefit would it give Google or the user?

Are you really trying to say it should have been obvious in 2003 what Google would be today?

I'm saying they had the same method of operation: take demographic data to show better advertisements. Nothing has changed except they're adding new products.

Right - and each new product increases the scope of the profiling they are able to do and reveals more about their product strategy. At a certain point this became more than I was willing to tolerate in return for the value of the products.

I don't see why this is so contentious.

Don't you think that was a bit of an overreaction? And will you be doing the same for any Microsoft and Facebook services you use?

I don't like Google's business model or the trade they want me to make in exchange for their services. Therefore I am taking my business elsewhere.

How can that be an overreaction? Isn't this how capitalism is supposed to work?

(I don't use any microsoft services that I'm aware of, and I will quit facebook after I'm done getting out of google)

Fair enough. You know you can pay for some of those services and not get served ads. You can also disable ad targeting and history in various apps. This, understandably, disables some features due to a lack of information to operate, but it may be much more palatable to you. It may be worth considering some of these options, if you don't like targeted advertising, which exists to serve you more apt ads.

I'm with abdulla. Sure it's not great that Google want to use more of our data. It's annoying, but unfortunately the internet can't be truly free. Google appear to give you pretty decent tools to limit how they use your data.

Switching off third party cookies is also very easy to do. I've done it in Chrome an have no advertising related cookies listed.

rbarooah, I'm not sure where you intend to move your services. Would be interesting for you to list the alternatives you have found.

Are you with abdulla because you are personally ok with the trade Google is asking for, or because that you think that anyone who isn't ok with it is overreacting?

For free services, I think it's understandable that Google wants to profit from the data they collect. I'd prefer they didn't, but to a point I'm willing to live with it so long as there are ways to opt-out to some degree. Not prepared to give them a blank cheque.

For me, migrating from their services doesn't seem warranted given the changes. From what I've seen it's relatively easy to minimise the impact. That said, moving to paid/alternative services, probably a good idea, this just isn't a trigger for me.

"Unfortunately the internet can't be truly free". This is true, but there's no reason it has to be paid by selling our attention. I'd rather use money.

Google Apps - I'm using local apps - iWork - with dropbox for collaboration.

AppEngine - linode, rackspace cloud, & AWS.

Picasa - iPhoto + Email

Voice - SkypeIn

Calendar - iCloud

"This is true, but there's no reason it has to be paid by selling our attention. I'd rather use money."

My attention is a commodity I have great control over. My money has less fluidity and I'd rather get some interest on it. Especially when new products are constantly created and they are sold to me in tiny modules preventing me from estimating how much money I will need throughout my lifetime to cover the cost of all my needs/desires.

But here is a fixed currency based model which maybe could work 100 years in the future:

Everybody pays a "technology tax" that's a fixed monthly or annual cost (maybe it's attached to your ISP bill). This tax then goes into a fund that tech companies (Apples and Googles of the world) can access and withdraw money out of based on the services they offer. Maybe they'd have to get audited on how many users they have and what type of services they take advantage of, and some independent auditor would try and attach a dollar value to this effort giving the techs the ability to withdraw that amount from the "tax fund".

I think this means that the value of services would be determined by a government inspector.

As for estimating the amount of money you'll need - services basically can't exist if there aren't enough customers who can afford them. Therefore there is an envelope into which they must fit.

This means that you can get a rough idea of how much money you'll need by looking at the income levels of other people.

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