Apple, Google and a Deal That Controls the Internet

Re:Apple, Google and a Deal That Controls the Internet by dragonwriter on Sunday October 25, 2020 @02:48PM (#24888778)

> Turn off all the data collection in Google and personalization from it and compare the results.

Yeah, Google has overtly for, IIRC, about a decade said they are focussing search improvements on personal and even predictive search, so, sure, disable that and the quality goes down.

But that just illustrates that, while there is an obvious advertising incentive for data collection, it actually is relevant to delivering useful search results.

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Re:Apple, Google and a Deal That Controls the Internet by Grimm1 on Sunday October 25, 2020 @02:59PM (#24888898)

I don't disagree that personalization is important, I disagree with the methods Google employs to collect that data and then that they also use it against the user on the advertising side. So yeah, Google does well by trampling all over ethics and privacy.

[0]Only 22% of consumers say they are okay with having their information collected indiscriminately by websites to provide a better experience.

Which means by that metric google abuses 88% of it's users unless they go through the means to turn the features off.

Informed consent, access and ownership are all pillars a modern site experience should have when it comes to data collection -- Google fails here and so does DDG in the opposite direction by just never asking which means they can't do any personalization.

The winner here is going to be someone who can provide the better ethical and functional experience. I firmly believe in the next 15 years we will see litigation in the US around data privacy just using California as the canary and Europe recently voted to get even stricter than the GDPR.

[0]https://www.privacymonitor.com/articles/privacy-guide/

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Re:Apple, Google and a Deal That Controls the Internet by nl on Sunday October 25, 2020 @07:24PM (#24891077)

> [0]Only 22% of consumers say they are okay with having their information collected indiscriminately by websites to provide a better experience.

That isn't a quote from the referenced link. The quote is "Only 22 percent of consumers agreed that they would be willing to hand over personal data to improve experiences." - which is quite a different thing.

I'm not happy to hand over personal data to improve experiences. But I'm very happy for Google to track what searches I do to improve their results.

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Re:Apple, Google and a Deal That Controls the Internet by Grimm1 on Sunday October 25, 2020 @07:31PM (#24891130)

Uhhhhh but you hand over way more if you use google services.

Your right it's not a quote I didn't quote it, notice the lack of quotes. I'm also not sure how you are splitting hairs over "information collected indiscriminately" which would be a superset including personal data.

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Re:Apple, Google and a Deal That Controls the Internet by Grimm1 on Sunday October 25, 2020 @07:36PM (#24891185)

Like maybe it's not clear but google turns around and uses your information in search for ad targeting as well. You don't just improve search which would be largely innocuous but that's not their business.

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