Google is a for profit company. On the side the offer products and services. Their profits come from selling your data to others.
Yes, I personally trust one over the other in this case. Although I don’t know what “for profit” has to do with anything. If it comes to Google or Government, geez, tough call that one.
It is a common misconception that FB and Google sell user data.
E.g. see https://www.facebook.com/help/152637448140583
"Google has also played a leadership role in creating industry standards for transparency and data protection. More than a dozen privacy employees at Google spoke to WIRED about how they make sense of the paradox of their work, insisting that there’s no internal pressure to compromise privacy protections to make a larger profit." -Wired (https://www.wired.com/story/wired-guide-personal-data-collec...)
Google also sells a plethora of physical products (Pixel devices, Nest devices, etc.) and services (Storage[Drive], YouTube premium, Stadia, Nest, Fibit, etc.).
This would be similar to calling Amazon "just a [book]store or a marketplace", whereas they also have their hands in Cloud Computing, logistics, grocery, iot, etc.
Note: Those products by and large all permit and enrich surveillance aggregation of the picture of you, and use with/for third parties/ads. It’s creepy how fast and accurate the multidimensional take has become.
I'd like to learn more. Do you have a source for that?
FWIW, I’ve seen you comment on Google email and ads. From what I am aware of, your information on what was/wasn’t and is/isn’t done has been… optimistically colored. I stayed out of it. But you could be less confident in some of these and/or disclose more readily that you are coming with a pro-employer lens while (you say) being far enough from it you might not know for sure.
Google does not sell the data to others. (In fact, much of Google's profits would remain intact even without any user data. That is the great thing about search ads -- the user tells you exactly what they want. There is no need to guess)
YMMW and what matters for me might not matter for everyone and weeding spam might be harder than before but:
Double quotes used to work reliably.
By collecting data about you, usually without you being consciously aware of it, they can offer access not just to a name/address but to a "profile". You are being profiled.
Incentives matter.
To get the full functionality from the device, it is difficult to avoid obtaining an "AppleID". There is an "incentive" for users to sacrifice privacy and control to Apple. That appears to be intentional. Then the after purchase data collection and storage begins.
I am glad these practices have not spread across the entire hardware industry. Imagine buying an SBC and being asked to purchase an "RPi Developer Certificate" or register a "SiFiveID".
You can see this trend quite clearly already: in 2012 Apple generated only 6% of its revenue from services while in 2020 it was 20%. Services tend to be also more profitable compared to hardware.
iPhone 12 was biggest super cycle since iPhone 7. It’s not that hardware revenue is declining so much as the flywheel is spun up for the ecosystem.
… [2021] a record-breaking year for Apple, beating the previous full-year record of 231 million units sold in 2015.
Apple is also benefiting from a higher average selling price, with ASPs said to be trending "higher on a positive mix" for the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/03/22/iphone-12-supercy...
We wouldn't know about it, but they were caught.
It's just marketing.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-data-collection-stored-r...
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/
https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/account-preservatio...
Looks like they set this up in response to GDPR.
Interesting how the communications services create a pen register by default.
Isn't iCloud data backed up on Chinese servers? I'm pretty sure that means you're being spied on.
This is not to mention the waste generated by Apple actively fighting the right to repair.
So, good, Google needs to go. But so do the tech giants.
Are you thinking of Apple’s switch in 2018 to storing icloud data in China for users in China?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud
> In February 2018, Apple announced that iCloud users in China would have their data, including encryption data, on servers called “云上贵州” located in the country to comply with local regulations. This raised concerns from human rights activists who claim that it may be used to track dissidents.
From some quick reading it looks like apple “has six data centers in the United States, two in Denmark, and three in Asia” as well as use of the major cloud providers. I’m not sure if there are restrictions on where or how data is stored for people not located in China though. I am assuming so.
You are ultimately arguing that a business protecting my data, while also using it themselves to sell me their own products, is just as bad in other ways as a company taking my data and using it to manipulate election results, to sell to shady companies and to market the shit out of me.
iCloud data is backed up on Chinese servers? Without being E2EE to boot? Do you have a source on this?
If consumers seriously want easily repairable devices, it seems like such a phone would compete easily in the free market.
Honestly, this sounds like you are lying intentionally to spread misinformation.
You are clearly informed and have a strong opinion. I find it hard to believe that you don’t know that only Chinese users data is backed up on Chinese servers.
If I’m wrong and you didn’t know this, please accept my apology in advance.
The fact that we're now seeing multiple lawsuits, PR campaigns, and lobbying to damage Apple since they put a requirement to disclose privacy details in the App Store shows how much surveillance capitalism has twisted the world.
Browsing on my phone at home with all those ad networks blocked okay... until you go outside your home network and get all the ads again. It's almost made my stop using my phone outside of my home network.
All multinationals need strong tax enforcement, but this isn't actually one where Apple is really any worse than others (and better than many).
Switched over to NextDNS, so that my ad blocking is on the macro network too. I'm satisfied. My wife is not, since her trashy "click here" links don't work half the time. :) Tells me it is working just fine.
My NextDNS dashboard - https://i.imgur.com/bjJ9OZH.png (My garage door opener is a chatty bastard)
Until an EMP takes us back to the Stone Age, it is really hard not to be tracked on the internet.
Source - I used to work for a company that does the tracking.
The top list seems like a reflection of market share: fls-eu.amazon.de, sessions.bugsnag.com, googleads.g.doubleclick.net, data.mistat.intl.xiaomi.com, app-measurement.com, in.treasuredata.com ..
Then just connect your WireGuard client on your phone to the endpoint
Use something like freedns.afraid.org for dynamic IP address support
In a nutshell: `update-dns get-my-current-external-ip-address $MY_DOMAIN_NAME`
You can have a subdomain like `vpn.yourwebsite.com` point to your residential IP. It may take a bit of fussing to get the ports and such right. But otherwise it's "just worked" for me, for the last 6 months.
Useful if you want to remove the dependency on yet-another-service-provider that can go out of business (the dynamic-dns people).
They have a paid option that gives you a higher query quota.
Try to be more condescending, kid. It'll make your point so much more effective if you think I don't know what DNS filtering is.
Trying to spackle over social, economic, and political problems with technical hacks doesn't solve the underlying issue.
Related, but different: There's a new proxying web browsing service for Safari called "Safe Browsing": https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/11/ios-14-5-beta-safe-brow...
(edit: clarity)
You don't actually know if your data is given away. We only learn after Apple is caught.
Only if you live in China, which is well known to be a surveillance state with access to all personal data.
> and the US government.
Yes, but only by court order, rule which applies to every US company. This is a problem, but not one with Apple.
> You don't actually know if your data is given away. We only learn after Apple is caught.
True for every company in the world.
You make this sound like a problem with Apple, but these are problems with the US and Chinese governments.
That is until I switched to iOS and was given the option to hide my true email address, tell an app not to track me, and otherwise get visibility into just how much my data is getting sniffed for stupid reasons that have nothing to do with the service I’m using.