Googler #1: "We've managed to capture everyone's video watching habits, email, activities via Calendar, audio and video calls, browsing habits, what they're looking at via Glass, and where they are via Maps. But there's a major hole in our knowledge: we don't know what people are thinking".
Googler #2: "Let's get people to tell us. We'll call it Keep and give it the tag line: 'Google Keep lets you quickly capture what’s on your mind.'"
Despite all the negativity here, Google is a decent choice. They take security seriously (TFA, PFS), offer clients for major platforms, and have the infrastructure.
Here's the reality of the situation:
- If the service gives me recommendations, that's not something you could easily roll yourself. There's always some sort of dependency, like Solr or ElasticSearch that you'd have to set up. I don't have the time or motivation to stand that nonsense up on my own VPS.
- I would almost guarantee that Keep or Evernote are more reliable than anything I could stand up on my own crummy VPS.
- Anything I could build probably doesn't have its own syncing app that works properly offline.
- Whatever I need to jot down probably doesn't even need half the security that the services out there provide. Do I really care if the list of movies that I want to watch on Netflix gets leaked to the public? Meh.
- It's unlikely that any home-grown or OSS solution would have the rigorous polish of Keep or Evernote.
Google tells us they keep the data. Everyone especially your ISP and government is capable of MUCH more private information.
Everyone is spitting data into the world. Who is seeing it is the question? I never stop being amazed at how people view the Internet as a private place.
Sure you can use Tor and Tail but really the Internet is not a locked box. Also I know that I am viewed as suspect by my government if I run either one of those on my IP. Causing them to think it is worth it to break in and look at my data.
Google is services I get for letting them see what I do. I am okay with being the product and use my internet as such. If you don't want to they don't have a business model for that.