This is relevant. But Google is also held to a higher standard. Not necessarily by the user base at large, but by the (tech) media. When I saw articles describing Amazons and Microsofts continued support for military and government contracts (Hololens, Pentagon Cloud contract, Jeff Bezos tweets, GovCloud) there is some push back in the comments. But many commenters were actually praising their steadfast commitment of "not giving in to public pressure", and "if they don't do it, China will win". In that way, they kind of got away with it and Google is now at competitive disadvantage. It's weird, because I don't believe MS or AMZN's personell is any more fine with it than Google's is.

Anyway. I can't say I'm surprised by this. I'm just hoping we manage to overcome nationalistic behavior in time. Global problems (AI regulation, climate change, human augmentation) will require global cooperation on a level that will allow no self-serving behavior. And unfortunately evolution has ill prepared us for this.

I bet this changes fast when NEOM opens up with its shiny new Alphabet HQ.

Personally, one of the reasons I have a little more hope for Google is the ownership structure. Larry and Sergei made some very controversial decisions when they went public with Google, in spite of severe pushback from investors, which tallies with my impression (right or wrong), that they are not only pretty reasaonable guys but also able to resist outside pressure, even to their own financial detriment. An example is the Dutch auction IPO, which democratized the offering and in turn put them on the shitlist with the financial industry at the time. The share structure guarantees that Larry and Sergei remain in 100% control of the company and can pretty much do whatever they like. They made that clear in the prospectus, as well as the fact that they had no plan to ever pay dividends, and in turn (paraphrased) see no reason for anybody to buy shares.

I will grant that in recent years I do not see a strong involvement from Larry and Sergei, in the spirit that I expect from them, and Google has been acting mostly like you would expect from any other corporation. And I definitely do not extend my goodwill to Eric Schmidt. But still, Google has vestiges of the srappy startup, moreso than any of the comparable tech behemoths, in my mind.

> Google had their own version of the Facebook's opt-in but highly-invasive research app, but only for people who were over 18 (at least as of the past couple years).

This equivocation is a little ridiculous imho. Google's app was literally a tracking app by its very claim, there was no sense of deception or bait-and-switch.

Same with Facebook's app. I legitimately think the outrage over this was overblown (and I said as much at the time [1]), but I can see the other side of it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19031055

Onavo didn't disclose that and then FB Research went targeting teenagers.

Doesn't that feel like it deserved more backlash?

We agree! That's why I brought up the comparison in my original post.

Not at their first try with onavo.

That might be the case, but I think for me, the prime thing that sets Google apart from, say, Facebook, is that I don't (or not as much) feel pressured into using their stuff because all my friends do so, but because it's genuinely good.

Which is less annoying for me, but not really the moral high ground for other issues. Still, it influences my view of them.

> the opt out process is ever-so-slightly easier.

Oh? How do I opt out of Google's spying? I already don't have an account or use their services, but they still collect data on me from a wide variety of sources, both online and not. As far as I can tell, there is literally no way to get them to stop it.

I don't think Google has much of a high road here.

While your opinion is popular, especially among privacy enthusiasts, it's also inconsistent with reality.

Google isn't spying on you. They don't give a damn who you are. This may come as a blow, but your browsing history is not valuable in and if itself.

Your identity and behavior is only valuable to Google for the purpose of making you happy with their services. It's only desirable to Google to the extent that it represents an ongoing voluntary relationship between you and them. Otherwise its value goes negative.

Your data, your history, your preferences, if you don't want to use that information to make their site and services more useful, then they have no reason to keep it. It's a liability instead of an asset. It gets purged pretty quickly. This is true all across the company. No information is retained without your ongoing consent. I am dead certain this happens.

This obviously doesn't apply to aggregate/anonymous data. They don't decrement their count of people living in San Francisco by 1 just because you don't want people to know you exist. That's not how opting out works. It's not how population statistics work.

> [Your data is] only desirable to Google to the extent that it represents an ongoing voluntary relationship between you and them. Otherwise its value goes negative.

Ad targeting?

Source?

> Oh? How do I opt out of Google's spying?

I was primarily thinking of google.com/dashboard.

It's far from perfect—for instance, it's only for people who have Google accounts—but when I go to Youtube, for instance, my video recommendation list is 100% generic, which is how I want it (no filter bubbles!).

I would really like to do the same on Amazon.com, but it's completely impossible. There's no dashboard equivalent.