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Re:Google Home by dredmorbius on Wednesday May 18, 2016 @09:53PM (#11727397)
To the advantage of society, Google's value also lies in not alienating people to the point that they shun its products and services.

Google cannot sell advertising based on my eyeballs if I won't use Google Search, block ads, avoid Google Maps, and download video via yt-download vs. watching it on the far-less-convenient YouTube website or application.

Google have lost me to search, and several other products, for precisely this reason. I don't know the segment of the population I represent, but it is a segment.

A US Department of Commerce survey release this past week reveals that 20% of the population consciously avoids online activities already due to privacy and surveillance concerns. This isn't fully attributable to concerns over Google (and that almost certainly poses a subset of those dissuaded), but it is a surprisingly large effect of privacy concerns.

The trust factor you mention is a huge one. Cognizability is a wonderful word I've run across recently (from William Stanley Jevons' discussion of money). It refers to the ability to instantly and unambiguously recognise a characteristic or trait. Electronic devices lack cognizability of privacy.

Glass didn't do so well as I recall.

Re:Google Home by gvurrdon on Thursday May 19, 2016 @01:51PM (#11732131)
I've switched to DuckDuckGo and "paused" various activities within my Google account settings. Still, I can't help wondering if records I've deleted there are simply my copies and they have their own backups stashed somewhere.
Re:Google Home by api on Thursday May 19, 2016 @03:40PM (#11733108)
Google is known to never delete anything, not even intermediate revisions.
Re:Google Home by gvurrdon on Friday May 20, 2016 @03:30AM (#11736072)
Interesting. Do you have a reference for that? I'd be interested in more information about what search information (amongst other things) they keep.
Re:Google Home by api on Wednesday May 18, 2016 @10:04PM (#11727443)
20% -- I hope it's that high. That's a high enough number to get peoples' attention and challenge the prevailing meme of "nobody cares about privacy or security."

(Privacy IS security. There's not really a distinction.)

Re:Google Home by dredmorbius on Thursday May 19, 2016 @02:39AM (#11728471)
Actually higher, see my follow-up above.
Re:Google Home by eva1984 on Wednesday May 18, 2016 @10:32PM (#11727552)
20% of the population consciously avoids online activities already due to privacy and surveillance concerns

citation needed.

Re:Google Home by dredmorbius on Thursday May 19, 2016 @02:39AM (#11728468)
Actually I got that wrong, the number is 29%. The 20% figure applies to those who are aware of fraudulent credit card activity.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/05/13...

"Nearly one in two Internet users say privacy and security concerns have now stopped them from doing basic things online — such as posting to social networks, expressing opinions in forums or even buying things from websites, according to a new government survey released Friday.

This chilling effect, pulled out of a survey of 41,000 U.S. households who use the Internet, show the insecurity of the Web is beginning to have consequences that stretch beyond the direct fall-out of an individual losing personal data in breach. The research suggests some consumers are reaching a tipping point where they feel they can no longer trust using the Internet for everyday activities."

More: https://www.ntia.doc.gov/blog/2016/lack-trust-internet-priva...