
Selling Secrets of Phone Users to Advertisers - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/technology/selling-secrets-of-phone-users-to-advertisers.html?ref=technology&_r=0
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greenyoda
_“We’re observing your behaviors and connecting your profile to mobile
devices,” said Eric Rosenblum, chief operating officer at Drawbridge. But
don’t call it tracking. “Tracking is a dirty word,” he said._

If you don't want to call it "tracking", I suppose "observing your behaviors"
could also be called "spying".

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bowlofpetunias
I think the word you're looking for is "stalking".

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gibwell
It's a shame that they don't mention that the _purpose_ of Android is to
safeguard Google's access to this information.

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DannyBee
Uh, no it's not. I'm not even sure where people get this stuff.

The purpose of android was twofold, AFAIK

1\. Andy thought the mobile experience of most users was a lot shittier than
it needed to be. While the sidekick was a success, Google was able to provide
a vastly larger amount of resources to bear on the problem than his startup
could (and well, his startup was running out of money :P). The main goal of
android, believe it or not, was to fix this shitty experience.

2\. Also, one of the strategies was to keep the carrier's walled garden app
models that were becoming popular (this was before apple) from eating Google
alive by demanding cuts of ad/other revenue from Google's inevitable mobile
apps. Actually, back in these days, the most worrying people on these fronts
were _the carriers_ , not Nokia/BlackBerry/whoever. Android and the iPhone
essentially commoditized carriers. Before, they essentially controlled what
_apps_ got to run on their network. Now they fight it out to be "the best
iphone experience".

Nobody was sitting around thinking about how they were going to get and use
personal info from phones into ads.

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huxley
Not sure I understand your #2 point, Google basically gives most of its share
of app sales to carriers (70% developers/25% carriers/5% Google) and also an
undisclosed share of all mobile ad revenue.

Edit: as to your point about Google wanting to fix the bad experience in
mobile, that doesn't contradict the idea that they wanted to monetize the
platform, 96% (2011) of all of Google's revenue came from advertising. You'd
have to be delusional to imagine that has no impact on their decision making
and strategies.

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DannyBee
I can state without a doubt in my mind that the original purpose was not to
monetize the platform. If it happened to be possible, sure, great. But Google
would absolutely have considered Android a rousing success even if it had not
been possible.

I hope i'm not really that delusional, considering I was involved in the
decision making and strategies so that I could ensure they could be defended
legally.

None of what i've said is actually even confidential. Andy Rubin has stated
the same things in interviews over the years. I guess people just assumed he
was selling them a line?

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gibwell
I'm sure you're right about the motivations of many of the people within
Google being essentially, 'to build a better platform'.

I don't believe the idea that this was an entirely altruistic goal.

I don't think what you are saying contradicts the overall idea that the
underlying reason for Google to invest in Android was to protect it's access
to data about users against other corporations.

I.e. Many people at Google were motivated to create a _good_ platform. But the
reason for creating a platform at all was fundamentally to make sure that it
was _Google 's_ good platform. The fact that Google requires access data about
customer behavior for it's business model can't just be washed away by
pointing at the motivations of the people tasked with making Android
successful - a lower level goal.

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DannyBee
"I don't think what you are saying contradicts the overall idea that the
underlying reason for Google to invest in Android was to protect it's access
to data about users against other corporations."

It does. You keep trying to twist what i'm saying into some kind of
complementary statement. It isn't. All evidence I have and know about tells me
Google did not invest in Android to protect its ability to gather user
information. Full stop.

It sounds like you don't believe this. That's fine. It does not change what I
am saying :)

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gibwell
I believe that Google's ad business relies on targeting based on user
behavior. If Android was intended to protect the ad business, it follows that
it must also protect access to the user data the ad business needs in order to
be competitive.

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DannyBee
1\. No, it really doesn't. This is entirely faulty logic. Ads relies on many
things. The fact that something may have been strategically useful to protect
one of those things does not imply it was strategically useful or had the goal
of protect all of those things.

2\. I'm not sure what part of "Android was meant to solve the shitty user
experience on mobile" part you missed. Does it not occur to you that one of
the main strategic goals was instead to prevent a shitty mobile experience
from eating away at ad revenue from mobile apps? What does this have to do
with tracking user behavior.

I have also already explained, multiple times now, the goal behind android.
You have repeatedly cut off parts of sentences (for example, where i talk
about others eating ad revenue from mobile apps, rather than "ads in general")
to try to make a point.

I've also stated multiple times your actual theory is false. It was explicitly
a non-goal to care about tracking user-behavior. I don't know how much more
clearly I could say it than that.

I'm honestly a bit tired of arguing. As I said, you are welcome to believe
whatever theory you like. It does not, however, change either history, or the
facts.

