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Comment by petjuh | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately their services are too convenient. I use them for almost everything I can, my reason being that they already know enough about me from my google searches, so I might as well use every other service they have.

Plus they're encrypted so only they know it. Also, I'm not from the US so MY government doesn't have access to their data.

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If you are fine with giving your life to Google, another thing to consider are others. Anyone who wants to communicate with you via e-mail also surrenders their private communication to you to Google.

> my reason being that they already know enough about me from my google searches

You could.. you know... change that.. https://duckduckgo.com

> Also, I'm not from the US so MY government doesn't have access to their data

Because the US doesn't have any allies that participate in data sharing, and definitely doesn't intercept data in transit over the greater internet and on Google's internal network...

Oh wait..

Same here. But I also pay Google for various services, and the lack of privacy bothers me enough that I would readily pay Google the relatively small amount I'm worth to them as a data source in order to get privacy.

THAT's where Google's position, or at least this Google spokesman's position is wrong: I'll give up both some convenience and some money to get more privacy.

But that's exactly the conflict: Google doesn't want your money, they want your data.

Paying for more privacy is not and probabably will never be an option.

Ehhhhh. "Google, would you trade ad revenue for the same or larger subscription revenue?" I think the answer would be yes.

Most companies, yes. Google, no.

It's completely against their current models. They're basically telling advertisers: You know that product we were selling you, that made us billions of dollars together? We're not selling it to you anymore, but it's still making us money.

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