Google Now

SkyHog said:
Google allows you to see what data it collects from you.
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Not really, Nick. What you see on their website is only a small portion of what's collected. There is a lot more information and detail behind what's shown.

Captain said:
Please site another company that does that. Why is the company that remains silent to be trusted more?
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Who says I trust the phone companies any more than I do Google?
 
RJM62 said:
You're basically describing the difference between a floozy and a whore. A floozy may be a bit loose in the self-restraint department, but she actually has a life outside of putting out. A whore, however, is a whore.

-Rich
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Not so. Google is neither. They collect data and that's good. I want my boarding pass to appear when I arrive at the airport. In order to do that they need to know I have a flight (email) and they need to know my location (GPS phone).

I like that they serve me relevant ads based on my interests. No, I don't have a weird fondness for ads, but if I'm going to be served one I'd rather it be about RC helicopters rather than ladies under garments.

I like that they follow what I view in YouTube. I've received many suggestions on content to watch that we're interesting to me.

I like that they track what I search for. It keeps my search results relevant. If I search for a picture of a Cherokee they know I want to see airplanes and not Indians. That's helpful to me by making my searches better.

Look at it this way;

Every Tuesday you eat at Moes and every Thursday you eat at Gari's. Both restaurants have descent food. This goes on for a year without missing a day. After a year of eating at Moes you aren't even recognized at the door. Every Tuesday you are met as a random person and shown your table.

But after a month or so at Gari's you are greeted with your name and shown to your favorite table with a view as they were expecting you. The host offers you your menu and adds that your favorite dish is out but suggests something you might like in its stead. Your server knows what you like to drink and offers to get it.

In order for Gari's to provide the higher level of service they needed to keep 'data' about you. Your name, what you've ordered before, what you like to drink. Why is it creepy for Google to do this algorithimicaly and 'nice service' when a human does it with memory?

Does google sell your data? I'd like to see a source. Do they use it? Absolutely and I'm glad they do. We benefit from it.
 
wsuffa said:
Not really, Nick. What you see on their website is only a small portion of what's collected. There is a lot more information and detail behind what's shown.



Who says I trust the phone companies any more than I do Google?
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Nobody. Please link to the numerous threads of outrage about phone companies collecting our data.
 
denverpilot said:
Utter horsecrap. I've worked in and around big telecoms my whole career.

They make a tidy profit on data center "cross-connect fees" and all sorts of other "costs" they pass on to Uncle when allowing Uncle to *connect* to GET the data. They're required to provide it. The law doesn't say how fast or via what method, and that's on PURPOSE.
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It's at "cost". The question is how "cost" is defined to wit...

It's designed to allow them to charge "full non-discounted" pricing so Uncle doesn't have to wait 30 days to receive a smudged fax or letter with the requested data.

Stuff like, "Oh, only our Union engineers can possibly ever figure out how to run that fiber cable across the room for you, Uncle... They're experts! We'll also need you to pay for all their background checks not just yours, we do our own 'extensive' checks in-house of course, for your safety." and, "The only ingress/egress at that facility that meets your security requirements is ours and it's really full. We'd give you a discount but you're lowering our customer capacity by asking for such a large feed."

They make a bloody fortune. You're clueless if you think they don't and it's really just "covering costs".
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Corporations can be really creative at defining "cost". So, yes, they can define it to the government (customer) as being cost even if it's inflated. Anyone who has a travel expense account w/per-diem reimbursement understands how that works. (As a great example, look up "Airline YQ fees").

And the other one, "If you're going to contest this bill we will have to shut the circuit down per our legal department until the matter is settled. If the circuit is reclaimed for other purposes during that timeframe we will have to charge you for the construction costs of dropping in new facilities to that location and we can't guarantee any particular timeframe. Our crews are busy building things for our customers."

Telecom has Uncle by the balls on this. It's well-known in the industry.
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Of course they do. As you note below, Uncle has telecom by the gonads, too. Some of those civil agreements allow the government to specify (well, more like veto) the equipment that goes into US telecom networks. Pretty much every telecom is bound by that kind of agreement - I think Verizon wireline has the least limitations, there's enough foreign ownership in VZ's wireless system that it's constrained. AT&T had some consents as part of the BellSouth/ATT deal. T-Mo & Sprint got theirs through foreign ownership. And once those consents are on, they stay.

Heck, the old Lucent/Bell Labs got bought by Alcatel - and had to create a US proxy corporation to keep control out of the hands of the French. One guess as to why that's the case.

On the flip side, telecoms must play ball. They made an example of Global Crossing years ago by threatening that since GC is a "foreign" company they might get "extra government scrutiny" if they didn't. GC is as much a "foreign company" as a cruise liner flagged in a non-U.S. Port. (Sound like any IRS scandals you've heard of? This is worse. Since it's related to 'National Security' there can be no outrage of any abuses of power. Since both sides abuse equally the game goes on...)

Their office in the Bahamas is literally a closet on the first floor of a nondescript office building with a company logo on the door. No one ever enters or leaves. I've got photos if you like. A former GC co-worker made a side-trip to find it one day on vacation. We all got a good laugh that Corporate HQ was a janitor's closet. Seemed like a good place to lock up the execs after two bankruptcies.
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There are plenty of reasons to love Google, and plenty of reasons to hate them. It's been my experience that most people who love them are users, and most people who hate them are those who do business with them. The latter group is where I fit in.

In my case, I am both an Adwords advertiser and an Adsense publisher. I've gradually been removing myself from the latter, however, as I replace Google's ads with other ads on the sites that I own. That I haven't completed this already is really just because I've been too busy with other stuff. My revenue from Adsense is pocket change at this point, anyway (usually between $100.00 and $200.00 a month), so it'll be no great loss when the process is finished. It used to average closer to a grand a month. That's a pittance, too, by Google standards, but I mention it for comparison's sake.

Where I'm a somewhat bigger player is on the advertiser side of the game. I haven't used my own Adwords account in years, but I do manage Adwords programs for clients who pay me to do it. A few months ago, the total amount of advertising fees that I've sent Google's way since I started doing this topped a million bucks. That's still a pittance by Google standards, but it's enough to give me a right to an opinion.

Because of the length of time I've been doing business with Google, I also have a pretty good historical framework for my opinions. And what my history with Google shows me is that the company has fundamentally changed since I started doing business with them. That change has not been for the better.

They started out, in my opinion, as a remarkable tech company full of brilliant people doing innovative work. The ad revenue was there feeding the tech -- they've always been an advertising company, after all -- but the technology was the focus. They made (and deserved) good advertising revenue because they built good tech. They also did it without being evil. I loved being part of that, even if only a very small part.

Since then, the company's focus has inverted. This accelerated when they went public, fueled I suppose by shareholder demands for every-increasing profits. But whatever the reason, Google isn't a tech company that funds itself by advertising anymore. It's an advertising / marketing company that designs the tech around the ads and the data it needs to target them.

To use a television analogy, there are television programs that are excellent, and because they're excellent, a lot of people watch them. Because a lot of people watch them, they earn their producers a lot of money in advertising. The excellent content is rewarded by excellent revenue. That was the old Google.

And then there are infomercials, in which the content is built around the advertising. It may be witty and entertaining (hey, I enjoyed the OxiClean Guy as much as anyone), but it's still just an ad. That's the new Google. And as with any infomercial, the ads are king. Everything is designed either as a medium to display the ads, or as a means to gather information about users that can be used to target the ads. If it doesn't do one of those two things, Google is no longer interested in it.

Consider the end of "20 percent time," which is what drove a lot of Google's innovation. Consider the closing of Google Labs. Consider the third-party services that Google has acquired, only to go ahead and kill them. Consider Google's killing of many of its own in-house projects that were beloved by many users (such as Google Reader, just as one example). Consider what Google did to Usenet. Consider Google's incessant efforts to force all of their users into their crappy Google+ service, even if all they want to do is comment on a stupid YouTube video.

In short, Google is no longer an innovative tech company that monetizes itself by advertising. It's an advertising and data-mining company with a peripheral interest in technology. It used to be the best show on television. Now it's an infomercial.

But hey, some people like infomercials.

So if you want to be Google fanboys, more power to you. If you think the services Google offers to you are worth Google knowing more about you than your mothers do, then by all means, use them with my blessings. And if you're confident that Google runs such a flawless operation that there's no chance that all that information they know about you will ever land in the wrong hands, then I sincerely hope that you're right.

As for me, I'll pass.

-Rich
 
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That's typical of what happens to every company that goes public. Once you introduce stock value to the equation, money becomes the company's product, everything else is secondary.
 
Henning said:
That's typical of what happens to every company that goes public. Once you introduce stock value to the equation, money becomes the company's product, everything else is secondary.
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Happens before they go public if they seek financing and sell Board seats enough for the founders to be out-voted. He who brought the sack of gold, makes the rules.

That's what killed one of the best companies I ever worked for. They needed capital to grow fast enough to do a public offering so they sold Board seats. Their market collapsed in the wake of 9/11 and they laid off. 400+ out of just over 500 two months later. I was employee #42. I was gone. I had a printed copy of the Red Herring and plenty of shares, instant toilet paper.

The skeleton crew stayed for four years and the founders each walked away after finding a buyer for what was left of the company with $3.5M each.

Most of the skeleton crew are now the biggest non-risk-takers you've ever seen and are hanging around in middle management and Director titles at the takeover company. Biding time until retirement.

I remember when the place was vibrant, interesting, attracted the best of the best. Now it's just boring. The balance sheet looks a lot better nowadays but the place is soulless. Dead.
 
RJM62 said:
There are plenty of reasons to love Google, and plenty of reasons to hate them. It's been my experience that most people who love them are users, and most people who hate them are those who do business with them. The latter group is where I fit in.

In my case, I am both an Adwords advertiser and an Adsense publisher. I've gradually been removing myself from the latter, however, as I replace Google's ads with other ads on the sites that I own. That I haven't completed this already is really just because I've been too busy with other stuff. My revenue from Adsense is pocket change at this point, anyway (usually between $100.00 and $200.00 a month), so it'll be no great loss when the process is finished. It used to average closer to a grand a month. That's a pittance, too, by Google standards, but I mention it for comparison's sake.

Where I'm a somewhat bigger player is on the advertiser side of the game. I haven't used my own Adwords account in years, but I do manage Adwords programs for clients who pay me to do it. A few months ago, the total amount of advertising fees that I've sent Google's way since I started doing this topped a million bucks. That's still a pittance by Google standards, but it's enough to give me a right to an opinion.

Because of the length of time I've been doing business with Google, I also have a pretty good historical framework for my opinions. And what my history with Google shows me is that the company has fundamentally changed since I started doing business with them. That change has not been for the better.

They started out, in my opinion, as a remarkable tech company full of brilliant people doing innovative work. The ad revenue was there feeding the tech -- they've always been an advertising company, after all -- but the technology was the focus. They made (and deserved) good advertising revenue because they built good tech. They also did it without being evil. I loved being part of that, even if only a very small part.

Since then, the company's focus has inverted. This accelerated when they went public, fueled I suppose by shareholder demands for every-increasing profits. But whatever the reason, Google isn't a tech company that funds itself by advertising anymore. It's an advertising / marketing company that designs the tech around the ads and the data it needs to target them.

To use a television analogy, there are television programs that are excellent, and because they're excellent, a lot of people watch them. Because a lot of people watch them, they earn their producers a lot of money in advertising. The excellent content is rewarded by excellent revenue. That was the old Google.

And then there are infomercials, in which the content is built around the advertising. It may be witty and entertaining (hey, I enjoyed the OxiClean Guy as much as anyone), but it's still just an ad. That's the new Google. And as with any infomercial, the ads are king. Everything is designed either as a medium to display the ads, or as a means to gather information about users that can be used to target the ads. If it doesn't do one of those two things, Google is no longer interested in it.

Consider the end of "20 percent time," which is what drove a lot of Google's innovation. Consider the closing of Google Labs. Consider the third-party services that Google has acquired, only to go ahead and kill them. Consider Google's killing of many of its own in-house projects that were beloved by many users (such as Google Reader, just as one example). Consider what Google did to Usenet. Consider Google's incessant efforts to force all of their users into their crappy Google+ service, even if all they want to do is comment on a stupid YouTube video.

In short, Google is no longer an innovative tech company that monetizes itself by advertising. It's an advertising and data-mining company with a peripheral interest in technology. It used to be the best show on television. Now it's an infomercial.

But hey, some people like infomercials.

So if you want to be Google fanboys, more power to you. If you think the services Google offers to you are worth Google knowing more about you than your mothers do, then by all means, use them with my blessings. And if you're confident that Google runs such a flawless operation that there's no chance that all that information they know about you will ever land in the wrong hands, then I sincerely hope that you're right.

As for me, I'll pass.

-Rich
Click to expand...

Google has a philosophy of 'fail and fail quickly'. It makes sense to find out what doesn't work as quickly as you can and fix it or kill it. In the case of Buzz and Reader they killed it. Sure, a lot of vocal techie people used it, but in the big picture...not that many. Google decided to kill it. That's their right as owners of the code. Plus, there are other RSS readers out there.

Your assertion that all they care about since the IPO is profits is stretching it too. Project Loon, Glass, ...ahh, there's more, I just can't think now.

Besides, how much exactly do you want from a search company?

BTW, they don't acquire to kill. They do acquire to get talent and (regrettably) they acquire to get patents (don't get me started on patents in this country...). Look at Waze and Motorola for examples here. Both acquired and more or less left alone. Waze is still great and even better with Google integration. Moto X is by far the best phone (IMO) out there. Maybe Nexus 5 comes close...but barely. iphone is toast and they know it.
 
Captain said:
It's funny how some people trust companies that collect data and don't tell you MORE than companies that collect your data and tell you. Google tells you, shares with you, allows you stealth mode, and greatly benefits users.
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The issue isn't just about whether you trust the company. It is also about features that can do more harm than good. We have more to fear than Uncle Sam requesting data from the vendor. All it takes is a good hacker to tap into these convenient features and anything goes.
 
Shhhhh! Quiet guys you are going to ruin my current gig of robbing houses when stolen passwords and Google now tells me to.
 
I miss Reader. I used to check my blogs daily. Now I rarely do - and I even downloaded two alternatives.
 
I have used Google Now, Waze, and Google Navigation for so long that it knows where I'm going before I tell it. After Wedesday night Church it asks me are you going to YMCA to pick up K? Well yes I am, please navigate me.

Apple knows to the minute when ever I leave or arrive at any location. I find it interesting and keep that feature on.

I really don't have a problem with companies and the governent knowing where I have been and what I like to look at. Before you say I'm a brainwashed Gen X,Y, Idiot... I know what they look at, who there looking for, and the fact that it's IMPOSSIBLE to get away from now days. I've already given my info up to the FAA, NGA, DHS, FBI, etc.... For various jobs, internships, and privileges.

So they already know everything they want to know about me.

Yes, I am a tech junkie so I do find all this data collection interesting. To me we are at the beginning of the so called "Cylon Era" as put forth by a professor of mine. So much info is being collected about you that your own personality can be recreated by a computer program. It's all ready being tested by several universities.
 
woodstock said:
I miss Reader. I used to check my blogs daily. Now I rarely do - and I even downloaded two alternatives.
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Yeah, killing reader was a mistake. But I guess it didn't make them any money. That one was just good PR and you'd think knowing what folks were reading about would help the advertising engine.
 
The way I figure it is:

1. The NSA knows everything there is to know about you, period. The only way to reduce what they know about you is to not go anywhere or communicate with anybody, in which case they still know everything there is to know about you, but it isn't much.

2. Google knows everything that could possibly gleaned from your use of their services, or from anybody you know using their services. Your options to mitigate this are to again not talk to anybody or use Google.

Given all that, at least with Google Now I actually get some benefit out of the above.

Sometimes I wonder if we just need a way to just publish everything there is to know about everybody so that it is all out there and nobody gets any kind of advantage by knowing your secrets, since there aren't any secrets. Employers won't have any choice but to hire people with compromising backgrounds, since otherwise there won't be anybody to hire, etc. The problems seem to come from the fact that all of society's rules are based around the expectation of privacy, and yet in reality there isn't any.
 
Privacy as we knew it is pretty much dead, you'd have to withdraw from society almost completely and live in a shack in some remote area to keep out of the various databases of mass information.

History shows that these new things never go away, they just get bigger. So, perhaps instead of worrying about keeping everything hidden we should rethink our society. Pass laws regarding what the government or a private entity is allowed to do with this information. Become more socially permissive and forgiving... in another decade just about everyone will have a questionable comment or embarrassing drunken debauchery picture out on the internet. Maybe we'll just have to learn not to judge people harshly for things years in their past.
 
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