blah64

perpetual3 said:

I really hope people can see that making google then end-all-be-all of Machine Learning is one of the worst ideas imaginable.  

Not necessarily.  I'd agree with you if all the data goes to their data centers, but this is an interesting hybrid offline-online model. 

ML poses some interesting challenges for google.  They are under a bit of a magnifying glass these days, at least more than a couple years ago, in part due to all the crap facebook has been caught doing with their pants down, but also due to the rise of general awareness of data privacy issues.  So google might very well face some adoption problems if they require all ML data to be processed on their cloud servers.  What they've done here is strategic.  Lure developers into the free offline capabilities, get them comfortable using google's ML tools, just like amazon has done with so many of their AWS tools.  Then try to entice them to adopt the online tools over time as more people get dependent on the features they provide.  It's not rocket science, this has been happening across the tech industry for the past 15+ years.

mr lizard said:

Hopefully developers will be required by Apple to state clearly if their app makes use of Google’s ML technology, so that those of us who care about our privacy can avoid downloading and using them. 

That's a great point, and I agree with your overall concern, but the same principles can also be applied to any number of apps that are gathering user data, and you don't get any say in the matter.  Thankfully we do get a say with device sensors (camera, GPS, etc.) and some resources with public APIs (contacts, photos, etc.), but we don't get a lot of say in what kinds of usage data gets sent back to the developers or third-party analytics companies, and that's a huge problem.  Flurry analytics (the google-analytics of mobile), for example, has their code embedded in over a million apps, and on over 2.6 billion devices worldwide ( http://flurrymobile.tumblr.com/ ).  Do you get a say in whether or not your apps are sending data about your mobile device usage to Flurry?  Not really.  Not easily anyway.

In an ideal world, there would be "advanced user" settings or app where users could white-list or black-list any and all data that gets sent out of their devices, kind of like how Little Snitch works on Mac desktops and laptops.  The problem is that this would likely be extremely complex and messy, and Apple generally tries to keep things as simple as possible, often at the expense of flexibility. 

The issues are complex.

gatorguy said:

The problem becomes old or supposedly unimportant info gets linked by companies such as Acxiom, augmented with what most would assume is unconnectable data but isn't when there's hundreds/thousands of data points available from a multitude of sources, then packaged for a fuller dossier to be resold.  Unless someone had NEVER shared personal information with a credit provider, store (for a return, warranty etc), employer, school, insurer, taxing agency, hospital, club, magazine, etc then there's a file out there for sale with your real name and personal info in it. Just because you now avoid online social sites and certain browsers/search engines doesn't mean you have become anonymous and not for sale.

"All that stuff ain't comin' from the internets."

You bring this up all the time, trying to make google look "less evil" because other companies do similar data gathering.

--> Just because there are other bad companies around, doesn't make google any less bad. <--  (except in your mind, it seems)

<snip>

But anyway I'm not trying to make Google out as a company that no one should have any concerns about and at the same time very properly pointing out that it's a fool's view if thinking they've somehow "protected their privacy" by avoiding Facebook and Google. You seem to focus more on the Google aspect despite the fact they don't sell personal data and on the contrary are exceedingly protective of it, when there are far greater and more directed privacy concerns out there that we unknowingly feed on a regular basis. 

And you seem to have an uncanny focus on comparing google to other companies instead of letting what they do stand on its own, which at the core is collecting behavioral profiles of internet users.  Note that I didn't say account holders, because their reach is far beyond that.  If it wasn't, I'd complain less.

Clearly other companies are bad.  facebook is a more sleazy company than google, but google is far more ubiquitous and far more difficult to avoid.  Studies have show this for some time, here are recent articles about the (relative) sheer quantity of data:

BGR:  Forget Facebook, Google hoards even more of your personal data
Wall Street Journal:  Who Has More of Your Personal Data Than Facebook? Try Google

The worst Google is going to do for the foreseeable future is toss an ad your way, one that you may or may not have an interest in. But it's an ad. They're not trying to steal your identify, sell your health data, out you as a corporate spy or wife-beater, disclose your arrest record or tell anyone where you live or where you like to go....
But there are companies and individuals out there who do exactly that for the right price. They worry me a whole lot more than whether long after I'm dead and buried Google or Apple gets sold to someone who is less protective of whatever they know about us. 

If you truly believe this, then you are far more naive than I think you actually are.  Long before you and I are dead and gone, management will change, laws will change, internet users' attitudes will change (and they've already changed A LOT!), and at the end of the day, that data is not safe and will not be able to be contained.  Period. 

Do you think it's even remotely possible to protect this massively valuable treasure trove of data forever?  Against state-level attacks?  For a while, sure, but it only takes one successful hack to beat thousands or millions of successful defenses.  Passwords are hacked every day via a wide variety of means.  And do you think that when the next 9/11 happens that Larry will go to jail to protect your personal data from being slurped up in its entirety by our wonderful gov't?  Of course not.  People will be scared, congress will react, and all that data will be out, and likely available via direct feeds.  The amount of behavioral data that companies like google have simply cannot be allowed to exist as it does now.

FWIW, I would like to see better research that compares google dossiers with data brokers like acxiom, but neither company will ever willingly make that kind of data public.  We only see a fraction of what their algorithms are able to suss out about individuals.  And don't forget that google has something like double (or more) data than facebook, according to what I've read over the years.

ireland said:

cropr said:

ireland said:

Apple should acquire DDG and give them unlimited funds to execute on their mission. Their CEO has the best response I’ve ever seen on Quora. And then when an iPhone user updates their phone and opens Safari a splash screen should give users a choice of search engines to select from, putting DDG in a very prominent position, where Apple can claim the annonmous ad income and remove Google from their defecto position. Unlike Facebook and Google, Duck-Duck doesn’t build profiles on individuals—their software is purposefully designed not to.

DDG is really targeted for US related content. So if Apple were to acquire the DDG and make it the default search engine the rest of the world have a clearly degraded experience.

I’m based in Ireland and have been using DDG pretty much exclusively for well over a year.

Have you tried StartPage?

DDG is a nice service that I make use of as well, but once you click any of their returned URLs, you're usually going to be tracked.  The StartPage proxy links allow you to (often) load the information on the linked pages without being tracked at all.  Neither search engine is perfect, but both are great tools to have in your web-surfing toolbox.

ireland said:

blah64 said:

What an odd thing to say. Did you think you "found" me?  I'm not going to give my location, but I'm okay saying that I'm most definitely not in Texas.

Your the blah64 in Texas. It’s settled.

Good one.  Yup, I guess y'all caught me.  lol

gatorguy said:

blah64 said:

cropr said:

ireland said:

Apple should acquire DDG and give them unlimited funds to execute on their mission. Their CEO has the best response I’ve ever seen on Quora. And then when an iPhone user updates their phone and opens Safari a splash screen should give users a choice of search engines to select from, putting DDG in a very prominent position, where Apple can claim the annonmous ad income and remove Google from their defecto position. Unlike Facebook and Google, Duck-Duck doesn’t build profiles on individuals—their software is purposefully designed not to.

DDG is really targeted for US related content. So if Apple were to acquire the DDG and make it the default search engine the rest of the world have a clearly degraded experience.

 But 100% google-free (and facebook and other tracking companies -free) for many years now.

Then you would not be the Blah64 in Texas.

What an odd thing to say.  Did you think you "found" me?  I'm not going to give my location, but I'm okay saying that I'm most definitely not in Texas.  A linguistic assessment of all my posts would probably bear that out.

The problem becomes old or supposedly unimportant info gets linked by companies such as Acxiom, augmented with what most would assume is unconnectable data but isn't when there's hundreds/thousands of data points available from a multitude of sources, then packaged for a fuller dossier to be resold.  Unless someone had NEVER shared personal information with a credit provider, store (for a return, warranty etc), employer, school, insurer, taxing agency, hospital, club, magazine, etc then there's a file out there for sale with your real name and personal info in it. Just because you now avoid online social sites and certain browsers/search engines doesn't mean you have become anonymous and not for sale.

"All that stuff ain't comin' from the internets."

You bring this up all the time, trying to make google look "less evil" because other companies do similar data gathering.

--> Just because there are other bad companies around, doesn't make google any less bad. <--  (except in your mind, it seems)


I don't like clouding the actual message (bold, above), but without getting into details, most of what you've mentioned above isn't applicable to me, personally.  There are very few bits of personal data that any of these companies have on me.  Unfortunately, there are 3 things that are nearly impossible to avoid: finance/banking, healthcare, and insurance.  The last two are related, but not the same as far as personal data.  I do have a couple banking relationships, none of which have any electronic associations, such as an email address, and I do not use mobile or online banking.  Healthcare data is a mess, but at least there's a veneer of protection.  Perhaps a topic for another day.  And insurance is an even bigger mess, with very little regulation.  My insurers know as little about me as possible, but it's still more than I'd like.  And I do presume that some of that data is shared and/or sold.

Most people that I know, even so-called privacy advocates, give up a lot of data for the sake of convenience.  You should know by now that I'm not one of them.