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Re:Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting ... by viraptor on Monday May 14, 2018 @01:57AM (#17063040)
Unknown English text compresses ~1:6 if I remember correctly. Known can be compressed better. There's also ways to send incremental updates where you say "previous 0.999GB hasn't changed".

I'm not saying that's what they do, but you can have many scenarios when you get 1gb of information without transferring 1gb of data.

Re:Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting ... by ehsankia on Monday May 14, 2018 @02:06AM (#17063089)
But that's not what the article is claiming. They are saying Google is using 1GB worth of data, though with very little evidence to backup their claim.
Re:Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting ... by viraptor on Monday May 14, 2018 @03:05AM (#17063383)
It could mean data transfer, but it also could mean other things. They write:

> could be harvesting a gigabyte of data from devices each month

Which is unlikely to be true in the literal sense of pure bytes transferred simply because: a) people would notice that very soon, b) people consume gigabytes but don't produce nearly as much - all of my monthly activity would likely fit in a few MB, c) processing that much is a pain - at the scale of millions of users they'd optimise that.

Re:Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting ... by dx034 on Monday May 14, 2018 @05:58AM (#17064134)
I think data transfer is a big issue. Even at Google's scale, 10 petabytes a month (10 million android users) probably creates more costs than it's worth for them. It's much easier to compress data on the device and only send new information, with that you can easily get a month of location history <10mb even for people who move a lot.
Re:Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting ... by ocdtrekkie on Monday May 14, 2018 @02:10AM (#17063105)
What are you basing your claim they have "very little evidence" on? Do you have access to the full contents of what they presented to the ACCC? Presumably this brief news article doesn't contain all of the information on the matter.
Re:Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting ... by ehsankia on Monday May 14, 2018 @02:18AM (#17063145)
Right, I should've been clearer. There's no evidence provided to us public readers. To be throwing such a bold claim out there though is often intentionally reckless. They are either baiting views or trying to chip at Google's image. Until we get the specifics, there is nothing here to discuss really.
Re:Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting ... by askvictor on Monday May 14, 2018 @02:48AM (#17063287)
Given that it's Oracle 'providing' the story, and News Ltd originally reporting it (both who have beef with Google), they are definitely trying to chip at Google's image.