Poll: How much do you trust Google?
Just wondering how much trust people have using Google services such as Gmail, Google Drive, Google+, Voice and other services.
I trust Google, but not the US government (or the UK govt for that matter) to not order them to turn over data, or take it anyway, and because of this I have moved most of my data, everything important, to my own server outside the US.
As far as Google themselves go, I realise they are driven by profit and use my data "against" me in advertising, but in return for that, I get reliable services that add a lot of value to things like email (i.e. Google Now). As far as I'm concerned, this is a totally fair trade-off, and one I'm happy to make.
And in which context are you using the "evil" word?
GApps for education had an option in its admin console to enable ad targeting, it was off by default, the main reason it was there is that it and gmail shared much of the same infrastructure.
As for the lawsuit which despite your claims and those of your linked source (which is parroting the PR folks at safegov in their interpretation) didn't uncover anything other that what Google already stated, but sadly the efforts of these vested interests to confuse you and other uninformed persons by misusing the word "scanning" bared some fruit.
Boko Haram kidnapped over 230 schoolgirls in Nigeria. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/30/hundreds-march-...
But even if we avoid extremists, it's easier to call people evil when they spy on their pupils using the webcams on the school provided laptops. And then, after people have complained, they do it again. http://www.wired.com/2011/06/webcam-scandal-resurfaces/
Kidnapping 230 puplis or spying on 23,000 pupils, or 230,000 or 23M?
It's literally no different than what Google does for anyone else, yet it's spying for schools because... why?
Were the children using the services under 13? I've never understood why this was potentially illegal, and never seen anything address that.
James Clapper, is that you?
According to Brin and Page: "Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served-as shareholders and in all other ways-by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company."
Google is awesome in lots of ways. At least for their core services like Search and Gmail, they are the epitome of reliability and trust. I check whether the internet works by loading Google. I trust they have good internal controls and won't just read my email.
However, just because they are competent and trustworthy doesn't stop governments from stealing data off of their servers, or compelling them to with a secret letter.
I don't want to use "another service". For example, switching from Gmail to Yahoo Mail because you don't trust Google is tomfoolery. Using PGP is cool. Google is not the problem--the lack of end-to-end encryption is the problem.
People already understand that we can't trust routers and access points with our plaintext--that's one reason we use HTTPS. I think we should start thinking of servers the same way--as untrusted messengers--regardless of how much you trust the company that's running them.
As for search, I stopped searching the web regularly in about 2008, directly searching Wikipedia, Youtube, Google images, Wolfram alpha, and Amazon directly from the URL bar with bookmark keywords.
I trust them (as much as I can trust any online service) with some of my data, but I have never trusted any of them with my crucial data. I host my own emails, I host (for most parts) my own git repositories, and I have made a conscious decision to stay as far away from social networking sites as possible.
As for the few concessions, I have simply made sure that I keep only a minimum amount of data outside my own control.
If I could boot up a VPS instance with DO or Linode, set up a bit of DNS and then do apt-get install two-factor-open-gmail then I'd be one serious happy camper.
"Some" of my data? What if all of my data?
Awful poll.
Outside of that, I trust them as much as any other large company with a profit motive. Which is to say about as much as I trust my dog watching the Thanksgiving turkey while it cools.
I trust Google to honor their terms of service (which are not the same as what I first agreed to) for as long as it doesn't benefit them more to break them and take the consequences.
I no longer trust Google and I have moved some of my data to other services
I have moved my stuff off of Drive, stopped using Google+, but I continue to use GMail until I feel like I have a good solution for email.
I, too, have stopped using Google+, and did not replace it with anything. I have gotten rid of my accounts on all social networking platforms.
Shouldn't be too hard to make it supply you with the direct download link - it has to know it somewhere! Just fork it ;)
I wish that Google would respect all my different accounts and account names. Sure, have some page where they're all linked and shown in some tree and allow me to set privacy settings, but stop logging me in and out of different accounts.
I am a lot more worried about companies having access to my data. I trust Google more than I trust Facebook or a bunch of other companies. I would prefer to be a bit more anonymous though.
The main thing is that I decided to use Google. I don't even pay Google for the service. If they want to use some information to run ads that might hopefully be relevant, then good for them. I never click ads and I usually use ad blockers anyway.
They may have metadata about myself (which is still a lot!); but data, like photos or personal conversations, not any more.
Things like Gmail and Google Voice weren't a particularly big deal to me. Fastmail is more then reasonable of a replacement for mail, and in place of Voice, well, unlimited long distance isn't all that hard to get. In lieu of call distribution, I'll just forward them manually if I need to be reached somewhere else.
I will say they kinda suck for searches with boolean operators, though. What with all the DMCA takedowns Google gets, that might be a moot point for some things anyway.
Those are pretty much the only Google services I use. I try to abstain from using their search engine directly as much as possible, instead preferring Startpage.