Yes, "Privacy is at the heart of everything we do" - Never expected this line from Google! Really google, do you want to have that as your opening statement for a blog post!
If the answer is yes, please make us feel confident about it!
Found it amusing because, the Privacy in Google is not straight forward (means not promoted by Google, like Apple), the users have to take the responsibility of their privacy by navigating the Settings maze and turn the knobs to attain the real Privacy!
"Privacy is at the heart of everything we do. Unless we think we can make money off your data. Then it’s a feature providing great targeted user experiences not a privacy issue. You know, how we block the ‘bad’ trackers in our products, just not our own. We make money off your data with our trackers so it would be silly of us to block those. But other than that sure, yeah, privacy is important. Our marketing people tell me I should keep saying that.”
Privacy as in, "we'll keep your data only with us and not share it with anyone else"
Which they don't do, don't need to do, and will not do. Since they serve ads themselves, it would work against their own business if the data spread to somewhere else
And this tradeoff is implicit in every attempt to move away from Google. For example, watching Youtube means that Google knows which videos I watch; watching Peertube means that some folks in the swarm know which videos I watch. Google is trying to establish a reputation as less likely to extort or ruin you than various advanced persistent threats.
Google's business model is antithetic with "privacy". This is by design and very much out in the open, they are an advertising company, their revenue is literally and as publicly as possible coming from not keeping your data private. Expecting Google to give you privacy is like asking a funeral home to extend your life. It's just not their business model.
Wow, seconds to minutes after comments highlighted the crass hypocrisy of Google's "Privacy is at the heart of everything we do" they are all downvoted.
I know this isn't core to your point but you may be interested to know that it does. I just turned on airplane mode on my Pixel and tried it. It's iOS which doesn't (didn't?) do it on-device.
Look, I 100% agree with you but there's not much point in trying to fight the river on this one. Google considers Google a trusted entity with your data. From their perspective keeping your data private is about keeping it safe from others.
Google is advertising firm (most of their profit comes from profiling and tracking users to generate best ads hit ratio) and them saying that "Privacy is at the heart of everything we do" is like afro-american joining into KKK. It is a complete conflict of interests with them.
What an opening statement. An ingenuine statement (not to call it a lie) like this actually prevented me to read further.
Maybe a more genuine statement, like "Privacy is important to our users and the safety of our society, hence we want to improve" or whatever would have me read further.
First, you have to admit fault, then you get to offer a solution and I decide if I use Google or not. And I don't at the moment.
Everyone is ripping on their opening statement, but it's because you've all missed the implied missing clause:
Privacy [of your data from other humans, except for people in the government] is at the heart of everything we do.
They have no problem sharing your data with machines though, especially their own machines.
I actually trust that Google doesn't have humans reading my email or looking at my location history. But I also know that their machine learning algorithms most certainly do.
And maybe a government agent here or there without telling me...
This is a nice gesture, but as always if you truly value your privacy it's up to you to safeguard it and assume that anything you share (intentionally or inadvertently) with an advertising company like Google will be shared, marketed, and used to track you.
Sundar Pichai was personally responsible for google's in-depth user tracking strategy across services, sites and devices even in incognito mode and the overall spywarization of chrome and android.
He is dishonourable, untrustworthy and any privacy posturing made by him and google should only serve so as to make their often-involuntary users that much more wary.
29 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 46.9 ms ] threadGood god...
If the answer is yes, please make us feel confident about it!
Found it amusing because, the Privacy in Google is not straight forward (means not promoted by Google, like Apple), the users have to take the responsibility of their privacy by navigating the Settings maze and turn the knobs to attain the real Privacy!
Not really, my terms are that Google can take a hike.
Really?
A more accurate statement is probably:
"Privacy is at the heart of everything we do. Unless we think we can make money off your data. Then it’s a feature providing great targeted user experiences not a privacy issue. You know, how we block the ‘bad’ trackers in our products, just not our own. We make money off your data with our trackers so it would be silly of us to block those. But other than that sure, yeah, privacy is important. Our marketing people tell me I should keep saying that.”
But you know, details.
Which they don't do, don't need to do, and will not do. Since they serve ads themselves, it would work against their own business if the data spread to somewhere else
Wow, seconds to minutes after comments highlighted the crass hypocrisy of Google's "Privacy is at the heart of everything we do" they are all downvoted.
No it's not. Fucking outright lies.
* You can't use the google assistant without turning on location tracking or web history
* You can't use your podcast app without web history
* I can't disable Google scanning of my email for product purchases
* I can't disable Google tracking me across the web without arcane browser extensions
* On-device speech recognition doesn't exist
* On the linked page, where's the option to delete my information immediately rather than 3 months?
I know this isn't core to your point but you may be interested to know that it does. I just turned on airplane mode on my Pixel and tried it. It's iOS which doesn't (didn't?) do it on-device.
Of course it is. They sell our privacy.
Good reason to start laughing :)
https://www.bing.com/search?q=google%20fined%20EU
* Google fined a record $5 billion by the EU for Android antitrust violations
* Google fined record €2.4bn by EU over search engine results
* Google fined €1.49bn by EU for advertising violations
What an opening statement. An ingenuine statement (not to call it a lie) like this actually prevented me to read further.
Maybe a more genuine statement, like "Privacy is important to our users and the safety of our society, hence we want to improve" or whatever would have me read further.
First, you have to admit fault, then you get to offer a solution and I decide if I use Google or not. And I don't at the moment.
Privacy [of your data from other humans, except for people in the government] is at the heart of everything we do.
They have no problem sharing your data with machines though, especially their own machines.
I actually trust that Google doesn't have humans reading my email or looking at my location history. But I also know that their machine learning algorithms most certainly do.
And maybe a government agent here or there without telling me...
Well, yeah, obviously. Why would they sell your data to competing ad networks?
He is dishonourable, untrustworthy and any privacy posturing made by him and google should only serve so as to make their often-involuntary users that much more wary.
Most remain here since they're reacting to a specific sentence in this post.