My take (not sure why nobody else is saying this):
Google is contractually required to not inspect or analyze the _private_ data it stores beyond technical purposes such as deduplication.
- Google Drive is used for corporate environments where privacy is the be-all end-all. Can't really do anything there.
- But by using UX antipatterns to get away with making Photos public by default, Google can say "well the photo was publicly accessible so we've ...".
Hmm. I wonder what the legal ramifications are of making a photo private. Does that constitute a licensing change on the part of the copyright holder (you)? Can Google argue _for_ holding on to "the copy of the photo that was public"? (Yes there's no bit difference but the legal flavor is different.) If that's the case, that could explain why everything's public by default; just grab a copy of the photo before the user makes it private a second later.
Remember how the Pixel has unlimited online Photos storage?
This is clearly a tracking move. I was reading about how YouTube analyzes the content of videos (AI content recognition), etc. If Google has the infra to analyze _video_ they can easily do images.
Related: https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo... (REALLY long - I started going crosseyed ~60% through - but probably the most relevant thing you'll find all week if you're interested in how Google is tracking you and what their motivations are)
> ...
> ... I think that this is a lazy design. ...
No, it's absolutely deliberate.
My take (not sure why nobody else is saying this):
Google is contractually required to not inspect or analyze the _private_ data it stores beyond technical purposes such as deduplication.
- Google Drive is used for corporate environments where privacy is the be-all end-all. Can't really do anything there.
- But by using UX antipatterns to get away with making Photos public by default, Google can say "well the photo was publicly accessible so we've ...".
Hmm. I wonder what the legal ramifications are of making a photo private. Does that constitute a licensing change on the part of the copyright holder (you)? Can Google argue _for_ holding on to "the copy of the photo that was public"? (Yes there's no bit difference but the legal flavor is different.) If that's the case, that could explain why everything's public by default; just grab a copy of the photo before the user makes it private a second later.
Remember how the Pixel has unlimited online Photos storage?
This is clearly a tracking move. I was reading about how YouTube analyzes the content of videos (AI content recognition), etc. If Google has the infra to analyze _video_ they can easily do images.
Related: https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo... (REALLY long - I started going crosseyed ~60% through - but probably the most relevant thing you'll find all week if you're interested in how Google is tracking you and what their motivations are)