I don't think the problem is what do they actually do with all those data, but what could happen with it. You can't be sure that in few years, they will use data for something else that ads, something that you're not agree, but meanwhile data are collected. You can't be sure what could happen with Google's data in 5 or 10 years. Sold ? After all, Google is a company, here to make money. Or even some weird law, allow government accessing those data, to track terrorism profile. Ok, maybe it's unlikely, but you can't be sure. What I'm sure of is that loads of data worths loads of money.
> After all, Google is a company, here to make money.
Those bastards... and they force you to sign in for their email and g+ and picasa and.. oh, wait.
Maybe I'll sound like a wierdo, but you can always opt out of using google at all and block them with ghostery or hosts. Problem solved. Let's be honest with ourselves and admit that data is the currency we pay for 'free' online services, and if we don't like the service or the 'price', we can just stop using it.
It's funny OP uses gmail and g+ but is worried about profiling for ad personalization. Btw there is google analytics on his blog.
>> After all, Google is a company, here to make money.
>Those bastards... and they force you to sign in for their email and g+ and picasa and.. oh, wait.
I haven't said that making money was bad, it's business, and that's the risk to know where is the interest. Sure you signed, but silly me, I wasn't thinking about all this when I first sign-up for Gmail, and sure as well I could resign, but meanwhile they collected data, probably much more that I can think of.
> Let's be honest with ourselves and admit that data is the currency we pay for 'free' online services, and if we don't like the service or the 'price', we can just stop using it.
You're right, I was answering about that to the person who said "oh, it's not that bad, the price to pay it's some ads that suit your profile", but the 'price' is indeed more than that.
> Btw there is google analytics on his blog.
It doesn't surprise me, his post sounds to me more like an easy "don't be evil" troll.
i don't particularly care what they plan to do with the data in the future. the general usage patterns are useful, the better marketers and other companies understand how i consume information, the more useful they can be to me. the worst that can happen with all the accumulated data google has on everybody is that the whole internet gets better suited to the needs of the people who provided that data. the way the internet works is that people try to sell us stuff by wrapping it in things we want. the better they know what we want, the better that wrapping gets.
The paranoia that some company might understand what i want and try to provide it for me seems absurd. why is this such a bad thing?
> I don't think the problem is what do they actually do with all those data, but what could happen with it.
This is FUD, plain and simple. While I don't advocate sticking one's head in the sand and refusing to predict or even speculate, it's easy to do too much predicting and speculating (and very prone to bias), it's easy to spread paranoia, and it's no basis for living a life and especially it's no way to decide moral or criminal issues. I could go on a murderous rampage tomorrow (perhaps not physically possible as determined by the laws of physics making up my brain but "possible" in the looser sense of it being a member of the state-space of world-configurations). Why don't people I know think this is likely? Largely due to trust that I've built up. Someone once asked me what they could do to gain my trust back when they broke it, I said that it's largely a matter of not doing certain things for a long enough period of time.
And so the problem is heavily dependent on what Google, Facebook, et al. end up actually doing with the data. What they could or might do has little relevance, what they're likely to do has significant relevance but still not as much as what they actually do. Thus far, they've been awesome about either not doing evil things with it or at least not letting me know about their evildoings. Their trust is not yet broken with me, unlike with some other companies I can think of (and correspondingly don't deal with at all).
Therefore I continue to use their products and let them collect and infer as they please. I don't exactly make this easy for them either since I too have "unusual" browsing habits in the form of NoScript, AdBlock, multiple browsers, shared, dynamic IPs and occasionally Tor. I didn't even join Facebook until a couple months ago on a "Let's see who friends me" curiosity (so I don't friend anyone myself). I'm sure there are plenty of Evercookies on my system I'm unaware of though and my full Firefox UserAgent is pretty unique. So they likely have a decent profile of me that they just don't reveal in a straightforward manner. They could also form a good picture from my comments here and elsewhere. (I don't think they have much ad preference data on me except perhaps that I hate ads.)
Though that brings me again to the issue that it can be worth speculating over what is likely to happen that will cause the trust to be broken and if I should be avoiding certain classes of actions that typically lead to harsh repercussions later. For example, suppose you have data showing it's quite likely that lending large sums of money to friends leads to the destruction of the friendship sometime later. Maybe your friendship will be different, but if that outcome is quite likely, you'd probably be better off not taking the risk and in this case acting on facts apart from what the other person has actually done is useful.
Even if these companies break their trust with me in the future, the most likely ways it will be broken do not seem to have incredibly unfortunate outcomes for me. (I can of course think of other quite nasty outcomes as well as anyone.) Similar to how, for example, a friend stealing something petty from you doesn't often cause great financial loss or inconvenience but the trust is shattered nevertheless. Or there may even be actions taken that I never signed up for or wanted and probably would have said "This will violate my trust if they do this" had 'this' been told to me before they did it, yet those actions actually end up being very useful to me and so it doesn't break my trust. I think this is actually how a lot of technological progress has been for a lot of people. They're taken on the ride from the status quo whether they like it or not, but in the aftermath they often like the new place better.
You admit that there is a risk, but what can you gain from taking that risk? Because without gain, what incentive to you have to take the risk? Yes, I agree that the likely outcome isn't that bad if they break my trust but only tracking my search queries would be quite revealing and sensitive and would reveal stuff that I tell very few people. So, the thing that yahoo did (releasing all queries with an "anonymous" user ID) could have had huge implications for me personally.
In terms of friendship etc. the gains are huge, but what about google?
Relevant ads? I have never, ever, in my life clicked on a google ad on purpose (probably a few by mistake (thus I immediately left the page)). And that despite that they are "relevant", so... What can I gain from letting google collect all that information about me?
And honestly I believe you get much better ads by targeting a site rather than a person. The best ads and the only ads I've ever positively responded to are those from a local tech site (the same ads but on a food site would probably not interest me as much).
The gain in offering up data to Google is free use of a number of services I find useful. Gmail, Google Docs, Google Chrome, Google Search and YouTube are just a handful of the services I enjoy using free of charge. In exchange, I have little to no problem with Google tracking my behavior to target advertisements at me.
Plus you can continue to use those services and opt out of Google tracking that stuff or use incognito mode in your browser. Not that you'd want to. Like me, you probably prefer seeing advertising that you're more likely to be interested in.
