Comment by julianpye | Hacker News Reader

Comment by julianpye | Hacker News Reader

This is purely speculative, but for me it looks like Larry Page may be preparing Google towards becoming a more privacy-aware company that you can entrust with information.

Why do I think this?

Trend: I think that 2014 has led to consumers becoming more actively aware of privacy. Google will be aware of consumer behaviour changing in this space. I have noticed in my general non-techie personal circle that people are far more protective of personal data and changing their online behaviour compared to two years ago. I think this is Google's current Achilles heel.

Tech: Google has so far got the best track record of security implementations which are open to anyone using their end-to-end platforms. They could seriously leverage this capability as a differentiator if it wasn't for the perception that they 'snoop' on its users.

Mission: In contrast to this Trend Larry Page has always been enthusiastic about a big vision of how consumers can benefit from sharing information to the right people, for example in the health space. At I/O 2013 this was a big topic for him: so many people's health could be improved if they would be able to comfortably share their personal data with the right people. The true value of this has massive potential.

Indications for a Pivot: Eric Schmidt is currently touring Europe, stating that Google doesn't 'read' email and does not make its money from analyzing your personal data. In the end Google's best bet may be to try to transform itself into a personal, trusted data company.

I think this is tricky because Google's business model is targeted ads - and they clearly do analyse personal data - they're clear leaders in AI and Ml.. Some of it is legitimately useful, Google now and Inbox for instance, their Gmail spam detection etc. But they clearly do use that data to target adverts better than anyone else, and there's a crossover in things like Now where some of that stuff is actually adverts.

Anyway, point is they do make money off targeted adverts. That's not a bad thing, they're not actually selling your data. Indeed that data is what makes them successful, they are motivated to invest an awful lot in keeping it secure and private in the sense nobody else can have it, only they can use it to target ads. In that sense I trust Google with my data but I know they are using it. Obvious caveat being NSA etc.

But then there's companies that focus less on targeted ads, like Apple. They can market on things staying on the device and never reaching their servers. Things like Apple Pay and Health, like you mentioned, I believe in both cases they claim not to have access. For Google there could be real value in combining that data with other stuff they know and offering unparalleled insights, and using their increased knowledge to better target ads. That seems to be the typical Google approach - and there are clear advantages and disadvantages to both - and again I consider that data to be safe even if Google has it.. With the obvious caveat.

With the NSA etc, Apple's way seems to be safer (with the obvious caveats of being opaque and closed software) or could be marketed that way. They have a lot of money to throw around and could potentially force Google's hand with the right marketing. But I think Google would struggle in that world to provide the services or use the business model they do now.

Believe me I've got my doubts on this as well.

That said: in an earlier conversation with a Google engineer, I've heard that the deep personal information on search actually provides very little benefit. Even for advertising. Current query + location is the most relevant information. And it strikes me that carrying excessive personal data is increasingly becoming a liability.

If Google actually are learning and internalizing this lesson, it could prove quite interesting. Especially with Apple (and possibly Amazon) nipping at their heels.

I don't think I could ever fully trust a company that uses every scrap of personal data they can find to target ads to me to also be my privacy trustee on the web.

Another possibility: Larry is placing a knowledge firewall between the idealistic tech side of the company, now headed by Pichai, and the dark business side that remain under him: advertising, operations & legal (e.g. NSA cooperation, lobbying). Schmidt in this interpretation would squarely be on the dark side of the firewall of course since he knows all the secrets from and is a proponent of that side.

Inbox looks to be going the other direction, though. For example, they are now making it harder for you to delete e-mails. All are archived by default. Why do you think that is? Because they want to mine them for as long a possible. Unfortunately, for Americans, it also means that after 180 days the US government can get access to them without a warrant (according to the outdated ECPA).

The threat of someone looking through ancient emails aside, there really is no reason not to store old messages forever. They're incredibly small, and you never know when you'll want to reference an old discussion because someone comes back into your life.

In the bad old days before archiving, people got in the habit of deleting emails because there was no better way to get them out of the inbox.

How long ago is "old days" to you? I've got every single email (other than junk mail) I've sent or received since 1999. I use Outlook, and everything older than 30 days gets archived into a local .PST file. Couldn't be easier.

They did something similar with the hangouts gchat replacement in gmail. You cannot log out. You are always signed in. This annoyed me to no end.

> Inbox looks to be going the other direction, though. For example, they are now making it harder for you to delete e-mails. All are archived by default

This isn't "going the other direction". "archiving by default" has literally been the case in gmail since it came out in 2004. And, like in gmail, the Inbox trash button is still right there, and Ctrl/Cmd-3 still trashes it.

> Unfortunately, for Americans, it also means that after 180 days the US government can get access to them without a warrant (according to the outdated ECPA).

The Sixth Circuit disagrees[1] there, and, as a result, many of the major webmail providers (including Google) require a warrant for access to email, regardless of age. See e.g. here: https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/l...

[1] https://www.eff.org/cases/warshak-v-united-sta

>> "Eric Schmidt is currently touring Europe, stating that Google doesn't 'read' email and does not make its money from analyzing your personal data."

Eric Schmidt is currently touring Europe, lying to people. - FTFY

Care to cite that?

I could find no source that Eric Schmidt is claiming that.

I think 2 posts above is referring to this: http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/02/technology/security/google-a...

20 seconds in he says approximately: "Besides the fact that we show ads in gmail which we've done for over a decade and used the information for nothing". Now that I listen again it seems like an interesting play on words that makes it very unclear what he means.

Yup, and below an article that makes it clear why he's lying:

http://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-279...

Before downvoting this commentor, make sure you've read and understand the contents of the article. Also, there's a reasonably in depth discussion about the article here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8500970

LOL

http://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-279...

There is another HN thread discussing this. I would not take Assuage at face value, and Newsweek is not a particularly good source either.

I wouldn't take anything at face value - no need to call out Assange. Read everthing you can and consider all arguments for their individual merits. If the article isn't making you Google things, The Hacker News thread has quite a bit of discussion as a starting point as well as good links.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8500970

Could the downvoter explain why this didn't contribute to the conversation? I suggested taking an even handed approach, and to consider arguments based on their own merit. I also included a link to discussion with further related content. Why is a downvote warranted?

Participating for a year, there are certain tribes in HN who will down-vote moment it does not conform to their world-view. For example, anything against Google will get down-votes except from a very few people; while generally criticizing Microsoft and Quora will get you upvotes. MS does have some strong defenders, though - which Quora does not (except me). Also, anything which shows that libertarian or conservative economic principles are not working will be either knocked off from the front page, or occasionally flag-killed. HN is dominated by a set of people who have only one world-view which they think is right, and you better not speak against them for the purpose of maintaining "quality" (#sarcasm).

More examples is that anything exposing problems with sexism in the tech industry seems to get flag killed around here.

The downvote/flag system is broken as it is on HN unfortunately, and used as a bludgeon to squelch voices.

There is only so many of those discussions one can bear, and they have always been OT because they are politics anyway.

So basically, you're saying that the very vocal minority of Google worshipers have the mental capacity of inbred cattle? That's news to me.

Much more interesting: https://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt.htm...

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