News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Google accused of 'trust demolition' over health app by andybak on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @10:53AM (#18450781)
> [data] "will never be linked or associated with Google accounts, products or services"

was true at the time but surely what people care about is data flowing between the medical app and existing Google services? i.e. what the wording could be revised and still keep to the original intended meaning.

Whether you think the company separation was critical to trust is a rather different question to whether they have broken the intent of their original promise. If you don't trust Google then you presumably also had suspicions about the previous arrangement.

Re:Google accused of 'trust demolition' over health app by clhodapp on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @11:47AM (#18451249)
Since "will never" describes the future, the statement was never true if the event happened (which it did) or ever end up happening, hence the PR-speak "we have no plans".
Re:Google accused of 'trust demolition' over health app by andybak on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @12:23PM (#18451634)
See my reply below.
Re:Google accused of 'trust demolition' over health app by eiaoa on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @11:00AM (#18450835)
>> [data] "will never be linked or associated with Google accounts, products or services"

> was true at the time but surely what people care about is data flowing between the medical app and existing Google services?

I would think people would care about the data flowing to any Google service. An understanding that it only applied to existing services like you're claiming would be meaningless. A hyperbolic example of this is Google/Deepmind would still be compliant if they came out with a brand new service, Google Privacy Destroyer 1.0, that puts all these people's private health data up for sale on the dark web.

Re:Google accused of 'trust demolition' over health app by andybak on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @12:22PM (#18451629)
I didn't mean that. At the time the medical company was separate from Google. Therefore the statement was intended to communicate the key point - we're not using your data for other stuff. This is the spirit of the declaration and the part that we should probably care most about.

The statement unfortunately has a secondary implied promise which Google has broken. But my point is that if we don't trust Google to keep the data separate then the initial promise was meaningless. And if we do then not much has changed.

If Google wanted to do bad things then they would have kept the companies separate to keep their promise superficially.

The wording was poorly thought out but unless you think the reorganisation is going to materially change Google's behaviour then I don't see it as hugely significant.