
Unplug From Google - pavs
http://www.slashgeek.net/2013/01/06/unplug-from-google/
======
bookwormAT
"If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product
being sold."

For me personally, this is the most stupid statement since the "war on terror"
nonesense from a few years ago. The reason this is so stupid is because there
are almost zero services that you do not pay for in order to use them, and
Google makes none of these services.

I pay Google with ad impressions so I can use their search engine. Google can
turn these ad impressions into money, so it is as good as dollars to them.

In order for me keep paying Google, they have to make sure I want to keep
using the product. Just like any other subscription model.

It is also wrong that if you pay through ad impressions, you can expect less
quality or service than if you pay money. There is no evidence that this is
the case, and it makes no sense at all. There are plenty of cases where a
company does not support an application after users payed for it, or customers
complaining about bad support for products they spent money on.

Finally, you are never the "product being sold". First, that would be slavery
and a crime. Second, I'm sitting here writing this with my free will, so
obvisously nobody has sold me yet.

Google's first priority is still to get users to use their products and be
happy with them. Just like it is with any other paid service out there.

~~~
dotborg
that's very cool story, but I did not see anything like that in google terms
of use: "we provide search, you click ads"

actually it's more like: "we provide search, all informations about you belong
to us!"

so "customer" is not the most appropiate word here, how about "slave"?

~~~
dreamdu5t
How about "person who consciously chooses to use Google's website." You don't
have to use Google. You don't "own" information you freely give to people.

------
ocharles
Just today I decided to move a lot of my self-hosted stuff _to_ Google, via
Google Apps (so I will be paying after my free trial). For me it was always a
trade off between how much of my free time I was willing to invest.

My self-hosted email was insecure (no SSL), noisy (no spam filtering), and
occasionally difficult to use (I didn't set up a web interface, only IMAP).
Furthermore, I've lost email due to my own incompetence/corner-cutting, such
as bad distribution upgrades and failing to properly restart postfix. These
are all things that I _could_ solve, but that's also not free - it takes a
large portion of my dwindling free time.

I also have a Nexus 4 and a Nexus 7 - the integration with other Google
products on these devices is the lowest friction route to a very enjoyable
experience.

I'm not happy with the amount of data Google have about me, but I'm happier
with that than losing my free time and having a second job just to manage my
own shit.

~~~
augustl
I've been paying for my Gmail access for a couple of years now, in the form of
a Google Apps account, works great. Part of me want to self-host, but the
gmail.com client and their spam filters and priority inbox (good for removing
marketing mails etc) keeps me 100% happy.

------
huhtenberg
> ... _and that website has analytics (Google Analytics)_ ...

Or Google Fonts. Or Google-hosted Javascript code. Or Google+ icon. Or god
knows what else they just throw out there so that it would get inserted into
people's websites and be pinging back. Whatever it takes, take it, take it all
for free, just ping us back, damn it.

Ahem, yeah. That was the rant part.

The rational comment would be that the biggest problem unplugging from Google
is other people's use of Gmail. You can evade Google all you want, but when
you email someone at john@smith.com and it ends up being a Gmail alias, they
got you, with all your email headers.

------
RyanZAG
Far as I can tell, Google is actually trying to move away from the 'we sell
adverts' business model currently. In the case of Android, they don't give
away their gmail/market/maps, but charge a fee for them. With the purchase of
Motorola, it hints that Google will be selling hardware in future. Google's
push into driverless cars will also be in the form of a percentage of car cost
(apparently). It looks like Google Glass will be a sold product and not
sponsored by adverts as well.

So I'm guessing Google understands the problem here as well as anybody.

~~~
jacquesm
All that really says is that even Google has a problem monetizing directly on
Android.

------
actsasbuffoon
Google has a service that shows you some of what they know about you. Last
time I checked they were WAY off the mark about me, and I use Google products
for nearly everything.

Aside from that, I'm not really sure why I should be offended about being
given more relevant ads. Being advertised to doesn't annoy me when I actually
want the thing being advertised. A very well targeted ad would tell me about a
product I want that I didn't know was available. I'm happy when I get an email
from Valve letting me know that a Steam sale has begun because I really love
their service.

On the other hand, I sometimes get ads for booze (probably because I'm a 29
year old male) despite the fact that I don't drink. I get ads for religious
groups (probably because I frequent atheism sites) which I have zero interest
in. Those are badly targeted ads that annoy me.

Aside from political dissidents under oppressive regimes, I don't see much
reason for people to worry about someone trying to figure out what you like.
Every time I meet some tech savvy developer who only uses a Linux distro he
built himself to avoid government spying, runs all his phone calls through
encryption software, and encrypts his entire hard drive on every device, I
immediately wonder if he's a paranoid schizophrenic or has very illegal
hobbies.

I know that sounds harsh, but it's what goes through my head. If you disagree
then please enlighten me. Am I being dangerously nieve? What specific things
should I be concerned about that I'm not? I'd appreciate links to news
articles showing that you're talking about things that are actually happening
and not just hypotheticals. I'm not worried about what-ifs.

~~~
nisa
> Aside from political dissidents under oppressive regimes, I don't see much
> reason for people to worry about someone trying to figure out what you like

I don't share the Google paranoia but It's not about what you like or don't
like. It's more a profile of you. That means Google is (in theory) able to
identify to a certain degree if you are sick, if you have problems with the
law or any other other personal trait that may be problematic. Your insurance
company would probably like to know about this. Your employer would also like
to know about it. I'm certain that Google won't share this data but others
might do.

> Every time I meet some tech savvy developer who only uses a Linux distro he
> built himself to avoid government spying, runs all his phone calls through
> encryption software, and encrypts his entire hard drive on every device, I
> immediately wonder if he's a paranoid schizophrenic or has very illegal
> hobbies.

That is a slightly rephrased variant of "if you have nothing to hide, you have
nothing to worry". And it's unrelated to Google IMHO, so I'll talk only about
encryption here:

It's not the government, it's also other companies. And it's great to have the
possibility to encrypt your HDD and be anonymous.

You don't need to be in an oppressed country, look at Wikileaks, journalistic
work, industrial espionage. There are lots of legit cases for encryption.

I'm doing freelance work, I have several root passwords on my hdd. For me it's
logical to encrypt the drive. The only technical somewhat secure way to
encrypt your drive is full disk encryption. I think my clients deserve that
I'm not leaking their passwords when my laptop is stolen.

> Am I being dangerously nieve? What specific things should I be concerned
> about that I'm not?

If you are a company: Industrial espionage, malicious hackers, law enforcement

If you are a private citizen you probably want to control the data trails you
leave. They can bite you have bitten numerous others.

You can e.g. easily create graphs of your social connections and cluster you
based on these. You can then make assumptions about these clusters. That means
your mobile provider knows where you are and were your connections are. Now
when law enforcement decides to collect these data from a whole city the
structure of your group is clear. You can identify influencing persons and
concentrate on these.

This happens, last I checked activism was not illegal.

------
thejosh
Sure, just as soon as everyone stops using Google Analytics to track users,
and blogs stop using Google Adsense to monetise their websites....

------
coopdog
The more they know about me, the better Google Now can get (and the less
irrelevant ads I'll see).

The only real risk of privacy breach is if the US government subpoena the
info, but that can happen to any US cloud supplier.

------
arikrak
What are people so afraid of when Google shows them ads? And Google lets you
manage your ad preferences and control your privacy settings. (You can also
use adblock to block ads entirely.) Also, Google doesn't use all the sources
of data it has access to, e.g. it doesn't use Site Analytics data to track
you.

------
brudgers
" _TINSTAFL: There is no such thing as a free lunch._ "

It's "TANSTAFL" because it ain't "is;" it's "ain't." I hate being pedantic,
and I ain't sure that I am. In any event, I won't apologize to the author -
the internet is a harsh mistress.

~~~
jacquesm
It's TANSTAAFL , and <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TANSTAAFL> lists
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TINSTAAFL> as a valid alternative (not that I
agree with that last alternative but you can't really fault the guy for using
it if it is that widespread).

------
kybernetikos
I would love to use a different email provider (I'd be prepared to pay up to
10$ a year for it), but it would need to be as fast and as good at searching
and have at least as much space as gmail.

I'd like to be using a google docs alternative that was at least as performant
and supported.

Other players are actually now catching up on search and maps, but even so,
it's difficult to find products that are as good as google.

I was hoping this article was going to give me suggestions on how to 'unplug'
but in fact it had a very low information content.

~~~
huhtenberg
> _10$ a year_

Woah, really? You must be really wealthy to shell out this much for an
_essential service_.

Try this - say, someone would be willing to offer you free heating for your
place, but in return they would install discreet cameras in every corner of
the house and be scanning and retaining a copy of every piece of mail that
goes in or out and every phone call. Moreover, they will not only record your
life, but also that of your guests even if these people would've objected to
that had they have known it's happening.

Would you take this offer? Rhetorical question.

~~~
jasonlotito
Well, I'd let them install devices to track my heating usage. Just like I
accept that Google, who is handling my email, will check that email for
relevant content to display ads.

However, if Gmail was trying to access to other things that it wasn't
associated with, we'd have a problem.

Sort of like your "rhetorical question."

~~~
huhtenberg
Fine, replace "heating" with "mail services".

Would you be OK with letting a company to scan and retain a copy of every
letter you sent and receive in exchange for being able to not use stamps?
Bonus question - do you think your correspondents would be OK with it if they
knew you had such arrangement?

~~~
jmillikin
Gmail is a webmail provider. They have to retain a copy of every email
sent/received, or you would only be able to read them once. They have to scan
email, because otherwise you couldn't search them.

It is easy to set up Gmail such that Google doesn't have access to the text
content of your mail -- simply install a desktop mail client (e.g.
Thunderbird) and enable encryption. But now you've essentially disabled every
feature of Gmail except for being a dumb SMTP relay.

~~~
huhtenberg
This is all fine and dandy (and obvious), but the point is that Google is not
_just_ a webmail provider. When someone switches to Gmail, it affects _me_ ,
because it lets Google track and profile me that much better. Hence the
original comment - "unplugging" from Google is basically impossible, because
of the proliferation of Gmail use.

~~~
jasonlotito
This would be a problem if GMail was the only means by which to contact
people. It's not. You have a choice to use email.

The truth is, when you contact someone, you don't know what is happening to
that information. Gmail, if anything, makes it more clear than most other
means of communication.

------
__Joker
Yes, Google permeates most peoples online lives with the pervasive services.
But at the moment the compromise between ease of use,free service with seeming
integration beats the privacy.At least google is seemingly better with privacy
than others.

------
jfb
The only service of Google's that I use is Reader, and that solely as a
backend to Reeder. I would love to unplug entirely, so I'm hoping that Google
messes Reader up to the point that third-party RSS clients will have no choice
but to switch.

------
1010011010
Eh, I like Google services. I use a Google Apps domain. I used to run
everything myself on a co-located server, sharing back-up DNS and MX duties
with friends doing the same.

Using Google services is _so much better_. Not only in terms of me not
spending time actively managing it, but also in terms of reliability,
performance and feature set.

------
afandian
Did anyone else see this as a piece of satire? Granted you had to read to the
end for the punchline.

------
greenyoda
Ironically, this page loads jQuery from googleapis.com.

------
martinced
For me, even if I hated Google --which, unlike the author of TFA-- I don't,
I'd still kinda like them because it's often interesting to make the ennemy of
my ennemy stronger.

I'm an "abm": "Anything But Microsoft" and I do firmly believe that the day MS
produce something that doesn't suck it's going to be a vacuum cleaner. And at
one point the future looked bleak: Windows at something like 97% market share
and some crappy IE version was slowing down the Web -- and slowing technology
as a whole (the story of MS).

I'm very happy that we know have to gigantic players: Apple and Google, giving
MS quite some headaches.

The last thing I'd want would be Google or Apple to sink and see MS reign king
again.

So to all the Google-haters out there (and they sure seem numerous on HN): be
careful what you're asking for...

The past _was_ bad. I don't think anyone really want to go back to that dark
past.

~~~
Evbn
Much of Google senior management is Microsoft veterans running Microsoft style
business units, so be careful what you wish for. Don't live in the 90s
forever.

