Few companies in the world can be said to have tried harder to destroy the individual's right to privacy. And with recent developments it's even more damning that they're doing this.
> Privacy is all about the individual human being. So, it's somehow fitting that the biggest privacy surprise in 2013 was created by one individual human being, the courageous whistleblower, Mr Snowden, who opened the world's eyes to the almost unimaginable scale and scope of mass government surveillance. We'll have to wait until 2014 to learn if governments do anything meaningful to improve transparency and oversight of their spy agencies' work. I have low expectations.
And this:
> More countries around the world passed privacy laws modeled on Europe's. The US continued down its path of exceptionalism: the Federal government debated, but did not pass, any meaningful privacy legislation, but many US States actively filled the void with sweeping new privacy laws, fulfilling their historic role as laboratories of potential future Federal laws. Technology advanced, raising new questions and igniting new debates. Law suits and prosecutions came and went, and in my personal case, happily, mostly went.
The only thing that Google can do to show that they respect their users is to stop storing so much information about them and change their TOS to restrict usage of data and ensure there's a convenient way to control it for the end user. Instead they force them to input more info like their real names and phone numbers.
As for this blog, it's so ridiculous that they talk about Snowden and yet Google is one of the main personal information providers included in the revelations. I don't think I've seen one post from a Google employee that demonstrated they understand privacy, they are hopeless.
However, how about just dont sign in to google at all? Click the dont track me stuff. Dont use other google products, like chrome. I mean, I do wonder how many people criticise google, from a chrome browser. I am right in thinking there is some choice here, right?
No, I dont particularly like how google has gone from being a great search engine to being this huge insane money and data slurping machine, but as long as one can avoid it, then, does it matter?
I tend to think that what is actually damaging to society is the choices society lazily makes, with out a decent level of knowledge and the possible future consequences. As long as we can get email for free, maps for free, browsers for free, and so on, who cares?
Anyone ever paid for a browser? I mean separately, not as part of buying Windows or Mac OS.
The problem is that you can't avoid Google. How many websites use Google Analytics? How many serve fonts via Google Fonts? Or serve JQuery via Google? How many sites serve up ads from Google's ad network? Google's tentacles reach every corner of the web. Android lets Google track you across mobile and tablet. Now they can track you on desktop with ChromeOS which potentailly tracks everying you do in the OS. Some people are fine with this if it means a more personalised service. I find the privacy implications horrendous.
Consider the following scenario: you visit a site with Google Anlaytics, then a site that serves up fonts through Google, then a site that serves JQuery via Google. Then you sign into GMail to check your email and immediatly sign out after. Then you vist YouTube (signed out). Does Google join up these journeys? We don't know. Google's privacy policy is deliberatley vague about what they capture.
People simply aren't aware of the amount of tracking that goes on. It's clearly not in Google's interest to be placed under greater scrutiny over what they track and record. The tech community are happy to oblige, giving Google an easy ride on such matters.
Go on then - what examples do you have of Google "trying hard" to destroy individual privacy rights?
It's also true that Google's lobbying budget has increased quite rapidly over the past few years. Initially I thought it was just to get self-driving cars allowed, and Google Fiber, which I was mostly fine with because in the case of Google Fiber I knew many states had poor laws against any competition to local monopolies, and in the case of self-driving cars, while regulation needs to be carefully weighed, I also think it should happen sooner rather than later.
But now I think they're going to use more and more of that money to either kill strong privacy laws, in US, and EU or other places, and also to try and pass new laws that allows them to do more surveillance of users [1].
[1] - https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/surveillance_...
Just going on names alone, I could argue that anyone who tried to kill Americas Patriot Act hated patriots.
er, writing a (personal) blog post?
And writing blog posts of course.
I'll still disagree with your hyperbole (for instance, the privacy law he's objecting to does absolutely nothing to guard your data from intelligence agencies in EU countries...), but that makes a lot more sense.
Collecting data is their business model. All of the "services" they provide are just honeypots for their data-collecting operations.
1) they execute their business model without ethical restraint
2) it is difficult to avoid being affected by said business model because they can legally collect the data that other entities produce about you.
It's right there in their mission statement "Organize the world's information". Most people didn't realize that included their own private information.