
Google Fights Back - denzil_correa
https://stratechery.com/2019/google-fights-back/
======
areoform
Google owns my soul. Their boxes know when I sleep, when I wake, how much I
exercise, what I listen to, my innermost thoughts, my chats with loved ones,
what I watched on Netflix last night, what my company does, the flu I have at
the moment, what the hypochondriac in me looks up in the middle of the night,
what I buy, whom I call, what I spend money on, where I spend it...

I nominally pay for these services, but I suspect it makes me a vassal instead
of a serf. Google consumes. Google contemplates. Google cognates. Google
knows. Google sees me while I will never get to see it.

At face value, as long as Google is Google, everything is okay but what
happens when google is Google no more? When it goes to join the great
corporate farm in the sky? What happens to the exabytes of data they’ll have
gathered by then? Who will own it once Google is Google no more? What will
happen to our lives once the data changes hands a decade or four from now?

Are there any contingency plans for the largest dataset on Earth? Do we get to
know these plans?

Who the fuck owns MySpace now?

Say what you will about Apple (and I’ve said a lot), at least I know where we
stand. I have switched to iOS and I recommend that you should do the same. At
the very least, Google will no longer know when you sleep.

~~~
loudtieblahblah
Google is already not Google.

The "Don't Be Evil" corporation that valued open source rather than open-
washing, that valued openstandards over "oops, we didn't mean to break that
for you!" isn't here anymore.

The company that bends over backwards, much farther than the law requires, to
enable the surveillance state.

I despise Apple. Especially on mobile. No SDCards, no headphone jack, walled
garden app stores. Ugh ugh ugh.

I have applications that does E2E for contacts and calendars that I'll have to
find an iOS solution for.

I loathe the notch.

But my next phone will be an iPhone.

Google collects so much absurd amount of data - that all the Proton-mail,
DuckduckGo, Wire/Signal, Firefox (loaded with adblocking and tracking plugins)
apps in the world can't keep you totally from it as long as you're on Android.
You disable things, you opt out of stuff and it just keeps on collecting
anyways.

And i don't believe for a second the data they're allowing you to "autodelete"
genuinely gets deleted. It just gets removed from your view.

~~~
pdimitar
I fully switched from Android to iOS when iPhone X came out in November 2017.

I realised in the next months that the perceived "freedom to tinker" on
Android is something hugely overrated. I could achieve almost everything I
wanted on my iPhone -- it just took a bit of time to find the proper apps.
Later Apple added the Shortcuts which is a very solid automation app.

Many Android users also lament the lack of a visible filesystem but that's a
huge plus in my eyes. What are Android apps doing with that? You guessed it,
scan your internal storage and SD card and upload them feck knows where (and
this has been proven by many advanced Android users). iOS' sandboxing is not a
bug. It's a feature which I appreciate a lot.

I'll not shy away from the fact: there are areas that I miss from Android. For
example, I could have inspected WiFi strength signal with an Android phone and
I cannot with a non-jailbroken iPhone.

Again though, as a guy who used Android phones for 4.5 years before switching
to an iPhone, I found that the uncomfortable feeling of switching to an
entirely new (and supposedly more "locked down") ecosystem is mostly an
illusion created by our brain's unwillingness to endure big changes. You get
over it very quickly. Don't trust your brain on these matters, it floods you
with non-truisms to avoid cognitive shock.

 _P.S._ I too loathe the notch. So after 15 months with the iPhone X I
switched to iPhone 8 Plus. Easily the best phone on the planet to this day
(plus a bigger screen and a slightly bigger battery). Now I dread the day the
device will no longer be sold.

~~~
loudtieblahblah
>Many Android users also lament the lack of a visible filesystem but that's a
huge plus in my eyes

That's awful in my eyes. What's more is my inability to browse that file
system without a third party application when i want to simply move files to
my computer.

The only reason I'm even contemplating the move to iOS, is b/c I have a
android based, digital audio player that has 2 SDcard slots that I keep
disconnected from Wifi (and it does n't have a 4G connection at all).

If my music was still on my phone, I simply would not move to iOS over this
singular issue. You're talking 250-400GB of files, not including my downloads,
my pictures, my Keepass databases, my SSH keys, my certs file for my VPN, and
files that I don't want the OS to index and put in some general library.

It stills seem ridiculously daunting to let go of. Because I use it
extensively. Daily - even without my music on there.

>ou guessed it, scan your internal storage and SD card and upload them feck
knows where (and this has been proven by many advanced Android users)

Except only the apps I trust are allowed storage access.

~~~
Daniel_sk
Android Q is adding scoped storage and it's more or less the end of a visible
file system. Even the existing file manager apps will have trouble to show
files without special permissions.

~~~
paavoova
Key word is "permissions", right? Meaning apps that don't wish to scare users
with permissions will adopt the new API, but existing filesystem access should
continue to function. Otherwise this would be crippling to some users and apps
and I doubt it would go over well.

~~~
kbenson
That sounds like the right way to do it. I would love a file browser that has
no network permissions but special file permissions, and my network capable
apps to have no extra file permissions beyond their own needs.

------
bovermyer
I'm impressed with the direction Google is taking, and how they've pivoted in
the face of public awareness of privacy concerns.

I like the Google products and services that I use. There are some that I miss
(Reader) and some that just confuse me (Bookmarks), but the core works for me.

Based on commentary I've seen, I may be the only person on Hacker News to
think so. Regardless, I'm hopeful for the future.

~~~
groovybits
FWIW, I agree with this sentiment.

Google did not _need_ to give this stance at I/O. It appears that they're
being as transparent as they can about the fact that our data is their
business model.

I get it: our online privacy is important. It is becoming increasingly more
difficult to remain truly anonymous on the Internet, and this is mostly thanks
to Google. However, the converse could be Google using our data for malicious
purposes. Has there been any evidence of that? I have not seen any.

I believe we live in an age of online convenience, and not just for the
average user. Google generally makes security-conscious products, especially
with Chrome. Heuristics has proven to become very effective in combating
online malicious behavior. By establishing our identities with Google, Google
can generally say "we are who we say we are" with a degree of confidence,
without us having to do much of anything. This is generally bad from a privacy
stand-point, but can be good from a security stand-point.

Overall, I think Google has done good things for the Internet. But good things
sometimes come at a cost, and sometimes third party companies want that cost
paid in a way we do not agree with. I think Google is doing all they can to
make that point clear.

~~~
britch
> the converse could be Google using our data for malicious purposes. Has
> there been any evidence of that? I have not seen any.

You are right. I have not seen any evidence of this yet either. What frightens
me is that IF something happens and Google is compelled or chooses to give
that data to an entity to use maliciously there will be nothing we can do.

As I look at it: It is dangerous for that much data about that many people to
exist in one place period.

~~~
groovybits
I look at it this way: What is your threat model?

What do you stand to lose if:

* Google shuts down tomorrow?

* Google turns into a malicious conspirator tomorrow?

* Google's databases are compromised by a separate malicious party tomorrow?

Each of these can have different outcomes for your data. Do you wish to
mitigate, avoid, or accept that risk?

Likewise, what do you stand to _gain_ from using Google services? AKA, do you
get substance out of their services in exchange for the information you're
giving them?

Everyone can have different answers to these questions. If you choose not to
use Google services, more power to you. I simply encourage everyone to think
about their threat model critically, and make an educated decision - rather
than hopping on a bandwagon.

~~~
ben_jones
I think for me personally its:

Over the next 20-30 years personal freedoms and economic opportunities in the
United States gradually erode, and large corporations seeking to
continue/increase profit are entirely complicit in legally feeding their data
into a surveillance state.

The goal of the model would be to decrease how fucked I am from this
eventuality.

------
gambler
_> It all begins with our mission to organize the world’s information and make
it universally accessible and useful, and today, our mission feels as relevant
as ever._

I said this 15 years ago and I will repeat it again. Google is like a man
selling boats after a dam brake. They are profiting by managing the problem,
not by fixing it. It is to their benefit if the problem actually gets worse.
In other words, looking at their long-running effects and initiatives, I see
that they aim to change the Internet so that it's completely unusable without
their services. (The recent stunts with AMP and Gmail are great, obvious
examples, but it didn't start there. It was going on for a very long while.)

This not the kind of thing that I want to spread to my offline life.

~~~
falcolas
Google is also holding the plunger that helped create the dam breakage. Not to
mention the pry-bars being applied to any attempts to fix the dam.

EDIT: For those who want to downvote, consider that the vast majority of
Google's revenue comes from the use of your personal information to target you
with ads, and that most of the advances in ad targeting using personal data
have been made by Google.

~~~
darkwizard42
I think you are espousing an "ADS ARE INHERENTLY BAD" mentality that just
doesn't resonate with people. I want to know about the best services that are
useful for me. I do not want to be advertised women's swimsuits on Instagram
(I'm a male with no interest in purchasing said item). When I see ads that are
useless its infuriating. However, when I see an ad for Allbirds or a cool new
leather jacket, I feel very much inclined to explore or purchase a product
that I will genuinely be happy with. So, ads aren't inherently bad, they
become bad or unfulfilling when they aren't personally relevant or become
overly invasive in experience or content.

~~~
gervase
It resonates with me, because I view ads as (intrinsically) mentally
intrusive. I find seeing any ad, regardless of its relevance, infuriating; the
advertiser is paying someone, not me, to place a thought or perception into my
brain _that I do not want there_.

If I decide that I want to purchase a new jacket, for example because I'm
traveling to a much colder climate, I want to be able to seek out (ideally
unbiased) information about jackets and make my own decision.

Some of that might be in the form of advertising, but I will have made the
decision to seek it out, rather than my plane ticket purchase being mined and
then targeted with a clothing company ad.

I consider it to be equivalent to someone unexpectedly spooning food into my
mouth, then arguing "Well, you have to eat anyway, why are you complaining?"
It violates my sense of agency.

Perhaps I have a higher desire for agency than most?

~~~
djakjxnanjak
Do you believe you are being force-fed thoughts any time you hear or read
anything anyone else expresses? Seems to be just as much the case whether on
not that expression is part of an ad.

I personally have a pretty strong desire for agency. I’m also conscious that
my understanding of the world is entirely constructed by the sum of my
interactions with said world, and advertising is only a tiny part of it. I’m
thankful for the sensory input this world provides me - without them my brain
would have nothing to do and my agency wouldn’t be very useful.

It sounds like you are suffering a lot because your experience of advertising
in the world is incompatible with your opinions about advertising. I can see
two ways to solve this problem:

1) Adjust your opinions about advertising, so that you think of them as part
of your voluntary engagement with the world around you, not something that is
being forced on you.

2) Remove advertising from your life.

------
busymom0
I think this is all just a PR stunt and Google's business model goes against
user privacy.

It's quite interesting the way people are more willing to trust Google than
Facebook with their data though. I think this might come from Google actually
offering more "useful/needed/can't live without" offerings vs facebook's more
vanity based services.

For example, Google takes your very privacy sensitive location data but also
returns you amazing mapping capabilities (google maps), transit information,
nearby points of interests etc.

They might have access to all your text messages, emails, contacts etc but
returns you useful features like the last year's Duplex feature or auto reply
suggestions in emails etc.

Facebook's vanity based offerings are quite shallow imo - Instagram is just
hyper edited pictures to scroll through, messenger/whatsapp might be useful
but it has quite good competition from iMessage or simple text messaging. So
for people who actually care about privacy, they are still okay with Google
having their data but are not okay with Facebook having their data because FB
doesn't really offer much of real value. This could be because Google being a
much older company than FB. FB has also had quite major privacy issues
(Cambridge Analytica being one of the major ones) and they have shown that
they really don't care at all about privacy.

One thing to note though, I still don't think Google should operate the way
they do and I am not willing to compromise so much of my privacy. That's why I
stick with iOS even though I know Android offers more power (especially since
I am an iOS and Android Developer). iOS's AI might be inferior but it gets the
job done for me and I appreciate the privacy stance of Apple over Google.

~~~
britch
It is possible for most people to live their lives without Facebook's Apps.

It is not possible for most people to live their lives without some form of
Google, whether it's search, email, drive, maps, docs, or calendar. It's
almost impossible to function today without using Google or interfacing with
someone who is using Google.

People are more OK with Google because there is no alternative.

~~~
busymom0
Don't forget YouTube! I sort of agree but I think this is changing for better
as competition improves. If I were to rate google services in order of
importance and lack of decent competition, it would be:

0\. YouTube 1\. Maps 2\. Search 3\. Email 4\. Docs 5\. Drive 6\. Calendar

I put YouTube as 0 as it is at the very top of the list. There's virtually no
comparable competition for YouTube and that's why Google is also getting away
with abusing their power with YouTube trending feed, censorship,
demonetization, clickbait etc. YouTube really needs some proper competition
but I really doubt any company will want to take over this massive
infrastructure. I don't consider Twitch to be a competition for YouTube for
non-gaming content.

Maps is the only one which I cannot live without. Apple Maps has improved
drastically in the last couple years though but in Canada, they are still not
as good as Google. But they seem to be on the right track.

DuckDuckGo is pretty good actually and I think most people can get the job
done pretty well with it. For email, there are okay competitions and I still
have an alternate yahoo email but they have been going downhill in last few
years.

Docs is one place where Microsoft Office is good but Docs is superior if
online collaboration is needed.

Dropbox is superior to google drive imo, especially since I am on iOS and Mac.

I have never used Google Calendar as I use iOS offerings and it does pretty
well.

I think if Apple can improve their Maps and if Siri stops being so useless, it
would be for the better and will help take away some power from Google. And
somebody really needs to compete heavily against YouTube.

~~~
britch
I totally forgot about YouTube, but that is a great point.

There is no good alternative to Google maps on Android IMO. I've tried

\- HERE: the app is not great and I'm not sure it's any more private than
Google.

\- OsmAndroid: as a map it is fine. It doesn't do address searches very well
which makes it useless when you need to get somewhere you haven't been before.

If anyone has a suggestion I'd greatly appreciate it.

------
_bxg1
Say what you will about Google, they're really good at PR. They and Facebook
share the most indefensible tech business model in today's political climate
(at least in the west), but Google does such a better job of obscuring and re-
framing that fact than Facebook does.

~~~
OkGoDoIt
I think there's also a distinction about what you get in return.

When I let Google track my location, I get useful hyper relevant results for
searches. When I let it track my emails, I get useful flight reminders and
package delivery notifications.

But Facebook doesn't really need to track my location to offer the service I
want from it, the extra privacy invasion very specifically only helps
advertisers. By giving it access to my contact list I can add friends more
easily which is nice, but it also does so much more analysis of my extended
offline friend network than I want it to, which feels like it hurts me more
than it helps me.

Both companies are monetizing my private data, but with Google it feels like I
get enough out of the deal that I'll (sometimes grudgingly) allow it. With
Facebook I feel like it's an adversarial relationship where I have to
constantly defend myself from FB. Obviously each person's valuation of the
deal will be different; for some people there's no amount of usefulness Google
could offer to justify the data they collect. But I suspect for many people
Google is on the right side of the usefulness to creepiness ratio.

~~~
aerique
Flight reminders and package delivery notifications... seriously?

This is what we let Google ruin the internet for?

For all the things people have mentioned here: maps, e-mail, search, docs,
etc. there are alternatives. Sure, they're not (yet) as good or convenient but
put some effort into this guys.

~~~
lern_too_spel
> Flight reminders and package delivery notifications... seriously?

> This is what we let Google ruin the internet for?

If you use any other searchable email service, you have exactly the same loss
in privacy. The only difference is they don't give you these value adds from
the data they already have about you.

------
dreamcompiler
Every company has two mission statements: The stated one and the real one.
Google's real mission statement is "make shitloads of money selling everyone's
personal information to advertisers."

The noises Google makes about being "useful" are just cover for the fact that
being useful is the only way they can entice everyone to give them that
personal information for free. If Google could get a law passed that required
everyone to have a grain-of-rice sized Android tracker implanted in their
body, Google would do it in a heartbeat. And then the need for all that
expensive "usefulness" would be over.

~~~
umeshunni
Given that you lack basic understanding of how advertising works, the rest of
your argument is moot.

~~~
dreamcompiler
Please enlighten me as to what I'm missing about how advertising works.

~~~
SquareWheel
If you think Google "sells everyone's personal information to advertisers",
then you are mistaken about their business model as umeshunni said.

Google themselves explain it clearly and openly.

[https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-
data/](https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-data/)

~~~
dreamcompiler
I know Google doesn't literally sell my personal information. They collect it
and use it to match a demographic that advertisers want. But the fact remains
that Google _collects_ my personal information -- they couldn't match my
demographic otherwise. And that means that Google itself is a giant repository
of everyone's personal information, even if they choose (today) not to sell
it, not to give it to governments on demand, and not to misuse it in any other
way. But should we trust them forever not to do so? And why?

~~~
gniv
But that's what you said:

> "make shitloads of money selling everyone's personal information to
> advertisers."

It's a very important difference between trusting Google with the data, and
trusting a random advertiser.

------
marssaxman
I appreciate the fact that they are being transparent about the nature of the
deal they are offering. I suppose my own naivete was partly to blame, but I
might not have wasted my time going to work there back in 2011-2012 if they
had been clearer about their value proposition. I remain convinced that Google
is full of intelligent, thoughtful, well-intentioned people who are shackled
to a business model I will not participate in, and all of their beautiful
technical achievements therefore remain irrelevant to my life.

------
PaulHoule
This article is uncritical.

In particular it doesn't mention the critical problem that Google makes its
money from advertising, not from people who pay for premium phones or premium
services. That is, you are still the product.

I recognize social positives from advertising, but there is a fundamental
conflict when you are dependent on "free" services paid for by a third party.

~~~
tinus_hn
You can still make money from advertisements if you don’t track everything
your users do. Magazines don’t know how long you look at a page and they still
sell ads. It’s just harder.

~~~
PaulHoule
The services would still be bad services.

I don't see tracking as the problem with Google.

The problem with Google is that it crowds out competition, also that it
contributes to a "data smog" environment. The way we would get better services
is to pay for them ourselves so we establish a feedback loop such that
encourages better services from our point of view (not that of advertisers)

------
dewiz
The problem with google’s mission is that it doesn’t say which information has
to be accessible to whom and in what way it’s going to be useful.

Given that google’s income is mostly from advertising, it feels like the
mission is about making my information available to someone else, and useful
for them to make money.

~~~
Liquix
Absolutely agreed. The doublespeak and lack of transparency leaves a really
bad taste in one's mouth.

It would be one thing if they were very straightforward the 'with whom' and
the 'for what' of the data they harvest. Users could weigh the pros and cons,
make an informed decision, and move on.

But instead they choose to masquerade as a forward-thinking philanthropic
organization, burying their ulterior motives behind pages of fine print and
intentionally vague 'disclosures' about what they do with your data.

Wearing a disguise makes one appear guilty. I would be wary of any individual
or group intentionally presenting a false image in order to mask their true
intentions.

------
mikedilger
Google is not too evil presently, but nothing is guaranteed and the amount of
data they have gives them more power than most nation states. So on principle
I've been degoogling. Here are my approaches:

    
    
      search:  duckduckgo
      android: copperheados (dead ended, waiting for puri.sm librem 5 on order)
      chrome:  firefox, containers, uMatrix.  Isolated usages of chrome w/o logging in.
      gmail:   fastmail
      youtube: peertube
      docs/sheets: local software (libreoffice)
      reCaptcha: isolated chrome usage w/o logging in, or I avoid the website and email the webmaster.
      fonts:   uMatrix block them, I live with the fallback fonts. On my sites I host the fonts locally.
      analytics: uMatrix blocks it. I don't need it myself.
      maps:    OSM or other mapping websites
      earth:   [never needed it]
      sky?:    [never needed it], stellarium
    

I'll know that I'm invisible to them once my family members start getting
funeral service advertisements. Unfortunately, they can still see me.

------
ProAm
Privacy is going to be the most valuable commodity of the 21st century.

Google is doing everything in its power to buy/take/borrow that commodity from
people (just like FB. Amazon, MS, etc...) They can say things like "We are
moving from a company that helps you find answers to a company that helps you
get things done…We want our products to work harder for you in the context of
your job, your home, and your life, and they all share a single goal: to be
helpful, so we can be there for you in moments big and small over the course
of your day. "

But I don't buy it.

~~~
pier25
> Privacy is going to be the most valuable commodity of the 21st century.

Pretty bold statement. Can you expand on that?

~~~
grenoire
OP is probably confusing service with commodity, as privacy is not a tangible
to be sold or exchanged.

~~~
ProAm
No I did mean commodity, but a personal commodity. Essentially when you are
born you are born into a certain level or amount of privacy. And slowly as you
age and use technology, everything you wished to remain personal or private is
slowly given away or sucked away, stolen, etc.... It's near impossible to
remain a private individual in today's world. And privacy is something that
once gone you can never get back. So I refer to it as a personal or individual
commodity, and these corporations would love nothing more than to take that
from you... for in their words "the greater good".

Clearly an opinion piece.

~~~
pier25
A philosophical question... but what do you think is the objective value of
privacy?

~~~
ProAm
Ultimately freedom (as a human) and opportunity.

------
sidyapa
Regarding that lady. I am from India and I see 100s of people everyday
struggling with this exact problem, unable to read what's written. BUT as
awesome the technology is it doesn't solve the advertised problem. The very
same people, almost everyone I know/see are above the age of 20 and don't even
bother to learn the language when they easily can from the $.01 books
available almost everywhere. You can give them a tool but how will you give
them the motivation?

~~~
hathawsh
I found that lady fascinating. I wonder if she has a learning disability. In
any case, Google's solution is amazing: by highlighting the word while reading
it to her, she is likely to learn to recognize words, leading her to improved
literacy. If this solution works as well as Google hopes, Google may end up
raising literacy throughout the world. Even if that means Google gets more
data about everyone, I think the effects on the world would be a net positive.

------
chris_engel
So if I am using an ad blocker and dont see any ads at all, dont I just _cost_
google, facebook, etc. money from using their services and having them store
my data?

What if the majority of people would block all ads? Wouldnt data collection
become meaningless?

~~~
OkGoDoIt
Ads are much harder to block on mobile. Especially on iOS, it's nearly
impossible to block ads in a native app. There are some tricks you can do with
a VPN but the coverage isn't great and it's error-prone enough that I don't
bother, which means casual ad-block users like my sister will absolutely never
go that route. So to the extent that mobile is the future, it seems ad-
blocking is not a long-term solution.

~~~
pdimitar
As much as I like iOS, I agree with you and I am still waiting for a good ad-
blocking solution.

But I am not sure it's ever going to come. Many smaller devs and studios
publish free apps which they monetise only with ads. Not sure Apple wants to
scare off millions of developers by officially streamlining app ad-blocking.

On iOS, VPN remains the only good choice so far, sadly.

------
convivialdingo
In the video, they say they have compressed translate, vision and speech into
"just over 100kb."

That seems pretty magical. Perhaps it is all server-side?

~~~
bepvte
This is definitely a sneaky twisting of words in my opinion. Maybe they mean
the size of the js that powers the app, or something along the size. Even
simple dictionaries on my phone are never less then 500kb.

------
lern_too_spel
The author is naive about monetization. Google should not care if making a
better product hurts its existing revenue sources. If Google doesn't do it,
someone else will. A smart company worries about having the best products that
people want to use first and about monetizing those products second, and
unlike a startup, Google has the luxury of being able to wait to monetize new
products until the ecosystem around them becomes clearer.

The author's simple-minded reasoning is why Microsoft was late to the Internet
search engine game.

------
mordymoop
I wonder if someone can explain to me why I should be upset about Google
collecting my data. I would pay money for Google to continue collecting my
data and improving its predictive model of my behavior, in order to better
address my needs as they arise. They're getting better and better at this over
time. It has improved my quality of life.

------
gigatexal
Yeah I don’t buy any of it (full disclosure I and my household are an Apple
only household). I’ve been moving away from google services. It’s slow. And
it’s tough because most everything they do is so damn good: google search,
amazing; google maps, gold standard imo; gmail — eh? It’s rather good. But I
would rather a company like Apple study me because currently they’re not in
the business of monetizing my every thought, action, or whim. I pay a premium
for the hardware and in return I get a company hellbent on privacy so much so
that they refused to unlock an iPhone used by a terrorist.

So while I often hate that DuckDuckGo’s results are sometimes wildly laughable
compared to Google’s I’ll continue supporting privacy first companies and pay
a premium to do so before I let my phone be a Google phone.

------
justinmchase
The inline translate text using your camera, right from search was in windows
phone circa 2010. Just sayin'. This feature plus offline maps caching &
offline routing with subway info was incredibly useful for a European vacation
my wife and I took.

RIP WP8

------
maxwellito
I would love to pick all of the arguments in this topic and fit them in this:
[https://maxwellito.github.io/tilt/](https://maxwellito.github.io/tilt/)

Not sure if I'm the only one but I don't see a perfect solution on the
smartphone part: \- iOS is privacy focussed but walled garden and overpriced
and impossible to repair. \- Android is affordable and hackable but Google
powered. \- Cyanogen alternative: not easy to access and remain dependant to
the Play Store to get apps (so back to Google power)

------
azazel75
So we live in a society that isn't able to find the resources to teach someone
how to read and get free... Instead that people can buy an Android phone and
become a slave of the technology... what a shame

------
NoInputSignal
I see a lot of comparison of device makers, with regards to privacy, in this
thread. I think this is a moot point, in that data is collected regardless of
what company, service, device is used. The fact that the data is being
collected is key; your anonymity is compromised regardless. Google is an easy
target due to their size and market share, but many people here work for tech
companies of all sizes. Reflect on what data that company collects, how it is
leveraged, and if the semantics is much different. Collect, leverage, repeat.

------
MildlySerious
The first thing that comes to mind here is Google trying to remove the edge
they themselves required to get into the position they are now in. They used
and abused data for two decades (and will continue to do so) to become an
absolute behemoth.

If they now play the "privacy" card it will stifle competition even more, as
there will forever be a compromise on either the amount of data they are able
to gather, or the public perception due to being less "privacy" focused than
big G.

------
aj7
They get the most elementary thing wrong in their “mission.” The very first
search link should be the most relevant, right? Now the entire first PAGE is
often bought and paid for.

------
phasnox
Yet another hit piece. It's disgusting how obvious and desperate these are
getting.

> To put it more succinctly: “Yes, we collect a lot of data. But that data
> makes amazing things possible.”

I don't like Google, but stating that collecting data is bad just because,
doesn't sell it for me. Oh, and this refers to data already available to the
general public.

It makes me wonder if there is something behind. What's the agenda behind all
these hit pieces? I really don't know.

~~~
blub
It could be that it's a hit piece concocted by the secretive privacy cabal,
still working at their evil plan to hurt people by making them control their
private information and at the same time to inconvenience powerful
corporations from doing whatever they want.

~~~
bepvte
There is no privacy cabal that you sarcastically suggest, but there is a lot
of money to be made out of paranoia, justified or not. Protonmails worthless
encryption, the dubiously safe vpn ads I see everywhere. I tend to see a lot
of exaggerations from some privacy oriented companies. I still trust those
companies far more, and a sizable portion doesnt try to spread fear and
exaggeration, though, but I do believe that a lot of companies are trying to
make a ton of money off of paranoia they help create.

~~~
pdimitar
> _Protonmails worthless encryption_

Can you elaborate on that, please?

~~~
bepvte
Protonmail advertises special end to end encryption thats only available when
sending emails to other protonmail users. Others get the standard TLS that
every provider uses. Recently they added a feature convert emails a link to a
page that asks the non-protonmail user for a password (not a private key or
login) and then decrypts the email in the browser, which I find pretty
worthless.

~~~
pdimitar
That's suboptimal but worthless might be too strong a word to describe it.

It's definitely better than nothing.

The proprietary thing does not look good I admit. But maybe they think the
open stack is easy to pwn?

------
peter303
Mission statement at I/O "be helpful for everyone" They showed how their
improved software helps diabled and illiterate people around the world.

------
prirun
The other day I sent my nephew a text on my smartphone:

As Morphius said, "Now do you believe?"

My Android phone decided what I really meant was "As Amorphous said..." So
maybe before they decide they want to control everything in my life with all
the data they are collecting, they should figure out spell correction first. I
got the spelling wrong, but their correction was completely stupid.

------
throwing838383
I changed my default search engine and homepage to DuckDuckGo. Two weeks
later, I didn't even realize I was still using DuckDuckGo -> it's that good.
Once people realize this, and how easy it is to switch, google may be in
trouble.

i don't have anything against google. I just think, having only 1 search
engine is too much power for any 1 company, no matter how benevolent.

------
telltruth
Most of the things demoed existed before in Translate app. I have used it and
as far as I know someone good hearted at Google did this in his/her 20% time.
The speaker, who seems to be some sort of executive, pretended that this is
new achievement from her side and Google is suddenly socially responsible. I
don't get this article and its author.

------
dav43
Can Google become privacy focused faster than Apple can develop decent
software/services, thats the question.

------
archey1
If only this technology could actually educate people, instead of being used
as a crutch. This is what Google wants, to have you so dependent on their
technology that living life without them is nearly impossible without them.

------
mark_l_watson
For me, a timely discussion. Early this year I signed up for GSuite, copied
stuff over from the free gmail account I have had for about 15 years, decided
Cloud Search, etc. made the privacy hit worthwhile.

Well, I got fed up this week because release of new GSuite services lags the
free offerings, and sometimes just aren't released. I lived with switching
between free and paid accounts depending on what I was doing (made OK by using
Firefox containers).

So, I switched my ProtonMail account to a paid for account, applied my custom
domain, and flipped back to using Apple's Calendar, Siri, Maps, etc.

Literally Google lost a tiny bit of my business because their paid for product
in some ways was worse than the free offerings.

I can see myself going back to Google paid services in the future but they
have to up their game.

------
sonnyblarney
This is a painfully well contrived bit of PR.

When companies start peddling poor people in need from some desperate place to
pull on our heartstrings ... it's a problem.

If this were something related to their core product - maybe.

But this is virtue signalling at it's ugly finest.

Surely, they mean well. Kudos for that - it's good they're spending a tiny
portion of their trillion dollars doing that.

What I object to - strongly - is the attempt to brand themselves by this act,
to imbue themselves with some kind of moral fervour, especially in such an
emotional way.

"Look at these puppies, they were starving, and then we saved them! Everyone
likes puppies, right?" Ok, so they actually saved puppies.

\---> Now please fix our privacy problems, which is actually the core of what
you're supposed to do.

------
ycombonator
I will stick to my on device privacy thanks. I know it costs more but its well
worth keeping my entire life out of being a lab rat for company that wants to
do good for yet to be born rats.

------
kerkeslager
> The implicit message was clear: “Yes, we have all of your data, but the fact
> we have all of your data is a good thing, because it allows us to make your
> life easier.”

This is why a) free/libre software and b) Moore's law are important. Trading
privacy for convenience is a real trade you can make right now, and nobody
benefits from pretending it isn't--the first step to fixing that problem is to
admit it exists. But there's no inherent reason this has to be done "on the
cloud" (which is just a marketing phrase for "on other people's computers").
As an industry, I would like to see us putting more computing power into end
users' hardware and more intelligence into freely available software so that
more of this work can be done on people's personal computers without giving
their data to amoral corporations.

~~~
gnode
It's not really about it being cloud based. It's about having a central
trusted party with access to private data which has public utility. As an
example, Tesla collects lots of private data about their users' driving, in
order to train their self-driving tech. Doing this in a free software solution
(if you consider the training to be part of the software) would be less
practical, as it would require training journeys to be publicly available.

The way out of this situation is to develop competitive solutions which are
less private data dependent.

~~~
kerkeslager
> Doing this in a free software solution (if you consider the training to be
> part of the software) would be less practical, as it would require training
> journeys to be publicly available.

I think most free software folks would agree that the training data doesn't
have to be public.

I do agree that there's some problem to be solve here, though. Part of the
point of free software is to be able to trust that the code you are running is
serving your interests. Right now I don't know of any proofs of concept of
manipulating what an AI does by manipulating the training data, but it's a
very plausible attack vector.

~~~
gnode
> I think most free software folks would agree that the training data doesn't
> have to be public.

That seems antithetical to me. The trained model is the program, and the
training data is in-essence the source code.

> manipulating what an AI does by manipulating the training data

You don't even have to do this. You can manipulate the model directly. Writing
neural networks manually isn't difficult. You can't do more with that than
conventional programming, but its sufficient to add malicious behaviour.

~~~
kerkeslager
> That seems antithetical to me. The trained model is the program, and the
> training data is in-essence the source code.

No, I think that trained models and training data are entirely new concepts. I
can see the similarities between trained models/programs a and training
data/source code, but there are obvious privacy concerns with training data
that don't apply to source code. Calling the training data the source code is
a leaky abstraction.

You could, for example, equally argue that the trained model is the source
code, and the program which operates on the trained model is an interpreter
which runs that source code.

Even if you refuse to concede that there are differences between training data
and source code, you'll note that I am talking about free (libre) software,
not open source. There are lots of cases where free software doesn't mean
opening all the source up. Free software is about freedom, not about open
source. For example, while there's plenty of source code in settings files, I
don't think there's anyone arguing that we need to check in our settings files
on open source projects. The point is to put the power in the hands of users.
Putting users' data out of their control is the antithesis of that.

> You don't even have to do this. You can manipulate the model directly.
> Writing neural networks manually isn't difficult. You can't do more with
> that than conventional programming, but its sufficient to add malicious
> behaviour.

That's an interesting point, and may provide a workaround making training data
public, i.e. you can generate the model and then make a representation of the
model public, rather than the training data. However, there's an assumption
here that the training data can't be reconstructed from the trained model--if
a study of this exists, I'm not aware of it.

~~~
gnode
I think the trained model is analogous to a program (which may be interpreted
by a virtual machine; not necessarily a machine code program) because it is
not intelligible by humans. I'll admit that there are tools for analysing
neural networks, but these are like disassemblers.

Trained models carry all the hazards of binary blobs, and so can't just be
trusted. Training data is no true analogue to source code, but the concept of
reproducibility is still relevant. At the very least, the production of blobs
should be auditable.

~~~
kerkeslager
> I think the trained model is analogous to a program (which may be
> interpreted by a virtual machine; not necessarily a machine code program)
> because it is not intelligible by humans. I'll admit that there are tools
> for analysing neural networks, but these are like disassemblers.

Yeah, I agree that's a valid analogy, but again I'll say it's _just_ an
analogy. The training data still differs from source code in its privacy
attributes, so I don't think it should be treated the same way as source code
in a free (libre) software context.

> Trained models carry all the hazards of binary blobs, and so can't just be
> trusted. Training data is no true analogue to source code, but the concept
> of reproducibility is still relevant. At the very least, the production of
> blobs should be auditable.

This is true, and it's a big problem, not just because of free software
concerns. One of the deeply problematic effects of this is that we can't
always explain why an AI does what it does, leading to horrifying
possibilities[1].

[1] [https://www.jwz.org/blog/2019/04/frogger-ai-explains-its-
dec...](https://www.jwz.org/blog/2019/04/frogger-ai-explains-its-decisions/)
(WARNING: I recommend copy/pasting this link to a separate tab rather than
clicking it. JWZ has a rather negative opinion of HN and a while back his
server started serving up rather unsavory images in response to requests with
an HN referrer. I'm not sure if that is still happening, but I know that if
you copy/paste the link there's nothing offensive on the page.)

------
jxramos
What exactly is the fighting back in this article?

------
iforgotpassword
Apart from the privacy concerns I'm rather hesitant to switch to anything they
make, only to see them kill it off again later. But well that also happens all
the time when they buy other companies, so you cannot really avoid that from
happening to you. Just like the nest news from yesterday.

------
carlsborg
Good job Google. Nicely done.

------
bigend
Google has become so evil, their whitewash attempts are a sad joke.

------
Markoff
how does illiterate pass through driving license test that they can rent a
car?

------
meh206
The F'ing Circle.

------
cafebabbe
Just look at Admob latest releases notes, and understand this is all PR
bullshit

------
ausjke
Everyone was concerned about the old big brothers: the government, the
police,etc. Now the real big brothers are silently here already: Google,
Amazon, Twitter, Facebook,etc. They can own the government and the police
force if they want to, and all citizens, of course.

------
AndrewKemendo
I think people misinterpret Google's vision as neutral:

"To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and
useful"

They want to make Laplace's Demon real in the form of their publicly traded
company. That's a breathtaking vision statement.

They explicitly want to collect every piece of information on everything that
happens worldwide, and then influence how that information is used. "Useful"
is in the eye of the beholder and is the wonderful escape command that lets
them do anything they want.

If that doesn't inspire/terrify you then it should.

------
Circuits
Honestly the amount of people concerned about their "privacy" is shocking...
kinda makes one wonder what most of these people are up too, what are they
trying to hide? Obviously, some people are just concerned for good reason but
I get the feeling most people are concerned because their hiding shit.

If it means that an literate mother of 3 from India can become literate when
it counts then Google execs can take naked pictures of me and publish them in
the New York times for all I care.

~~~
SquareWheel
"Not having anything to hide" isn't a great argument because some people, for
completely legitimate reasons, _do_ have something to hide. It could be an
abused person hiding from their abuser. It could be somebody with strong
political views entering an unfriendly territory. There's reasons for privacy
and it should be protected.

That said, there's also much value in allowing this data to be free. Google
are open about their business model (and they always have been), and provide
services that make use of it.

I do think it's funny when people accuse them of "harvesting data" or
"surveilling" people. That's just using emotional language to paint a more
sinister picture than is warranted, and it's rampant on HN unfortunately.

Try to watch out for extremist positions on both sides of the debate. Reality
is more nuanced.

------
HillaryBriss
If Google's possession of all this data makes many new good things possible,
then sharing this data broadly and freely with others would make even more
good things possible. Would Google share the data with other corporations so
that they, too, can innovate and serve the consumer _even better?_

I mean, if I buy into the notion of Google's benevolence, I should buy into
that notion for other corporations, shouldn't I?

~~~
lern_too_spel
Isn't that the purpose of Google Takeout? If Google isn't providing the most
value for your data, you can take it elsewhere.

That's how I use Internet services. If they don't do anything useful with my
data, I don't use them. If they do something useful with my data, I use the
one that does the most useful thing with my data. Thus, Gmail over other email
services and Slack over whatever nonsense Google's messaging product managers
are pushing today. And Apple services for nothing — collecting data and not
being helpful with it is stupidity, not "privacy."

~~~
HillaryBriss
thank you for making me aware of that.

------
bunnycorn
Google should fight back at last years promisses.

Where is the feature of calling people automatically on google assistant?

Last year they promised they would call my hair saloon for me, and it's all
BS.

Like everything they say every year, it never works in real life.

But I see lots of "journalists" praising it, while criticizing Siri as
useless.

Where is their self driving car too? Never complete, they always promise "it's
the next year".

~~~
kmlx
> Where is the feature of calling people automatically on google assistant?

already available in 44 states, they’re bringing it to the web.

[https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/goo...](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/google-
is-bringing-ai-assistant-duplex-to-the-web/amp/)

> Where is their self driving car too? Never complete, they always promise
> "it's the next year".

there’s zero rush when there’s a chance of killing people.

also this:
[https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp...](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/5/7/18536003/waymo-
lyft-self-driving-ride-hail-app-phoenix)

~~~
bunnycorn
It simply doesn't work in any real life situation.

Yes, the problem of self driving cars is they can kill people, that's the
whole problem, thing is that google is always promising that "they are here
for all", "it's the next year", etc. it's all BS.

You don't have a google self driving car, and you didn't book your hairdresser
via duplex, and you won't be booking your car or anything through any of this.

Those are the facts.

~~~
bilal4hmed
duplex is available though, have you even tried using it ?

can you provide any basis for your "facts"

Siri being subpar when compared to Google Assistant is well established.

~~~
bunnycorn
> Siri

Is this about Siri?

~~~
andromeduck
You're the one who brought it up.

