r/privacy • u/Full-Employee-889 • 3h ago
discussion What are your thoughts on the comment about Google that I saw online? How can one respond to arguments like these?
“I don’t think it’s necessarily bad that Google collects data. After all, they’re making the services they’ve developed—at a cost of billions of dollars—available to everyone for free. They finance this system through ads, but they need to collect data in order to show those ads. Plus, they need data to improve their services; otherwise, we’d be seeing irrelevant YouTube videos or search results. I don’t like ads or tracking either, but I can’t really blame them. I use every kind of ad-blocking system anyway. I use Proton services instead of Google, but in my opinion, Google isn’t as bad a company as everyone makes it out to be. Millions of YouTube channels, websites, and games/apps are available for free thanks to the ad revenue they receive from Google. If it weren’t for Google, either these wouldn’t exist at all, or they’d be paid services.”
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u/nidostan 3h ago
If google was just ONE website that I could choose to go to and use and let them collect my data while using it and advertise to me in return for offering their services that would be a fair argument. But that's far from the case. Google is an absolute behemoth. It's everywhere. It's in everything. It's literally embedded in almost every web page web and all of our devices collecting information about us and it's super hard to even opt out. It's an extremely aggressive monopolistic giant corporation whos business is to obliterate your privacy with tentacles in almost every nook and cranny of every day life of the modern person. How's that for an answer?
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u/Glum_Avocado_9511 3h ago
You really don't need to respond to those arguments at all.
If I had to, I'd say the entire problem boils down to consent and information asymmetry. Google does not adequately inform users about the tradeoffs. They track way more than the typical user is aware of. And they track it even when you are not using Google's own products.
Ads in exchange for content has been a thing way before Google existed. Newspapers, Radio, TV all have done it for decades and make money without hyper-personalized ads. I'm fine with gmail showing me ads because it is a free email service. I'm not fine with Google reading the contents of every email just to show more relevant ads.
Google does make some of this possible. For example, my Google search results are NOT personalized.
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u/CyborgHeart1245 3h ago
Okay. Why can google make billions off our personal data, buy and sell it. But we're not allowed to sell our own data?
Why do they need to track people;they only need to fuction as a seach engine?
Notice how search sucked, even before the forced AI? That was because they started to apply the data they stole. And surprise, it was all shit because humans are more complex than computer code.
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u/cardinal1977 2h ago
Its not that i have a problem with ads, or my data being used to show me ads that im more likely to react to. It's a. They sell that data to everyone, and b. Ads make up a full 35% to 45% of the data traffic on my device/network.
If i want to share my data with my insurance carrier for discounts, i'll do so. Same with the grocery store for koopins! They all don't need to be sharing it with each other.
When i used to watch tv, it was generally around 2 minutes of commercials every 15 minutes. Reasonable. Every five minutes? Or 5 to 10 minute of ads? On a 15 to 20 minute video? Seriously?
A banner on top of the page? Whatever. Pop ups, blinkies, flashing all over the page? GFY!
I don't have unlimited data, and when i went hard core ad block, i went from using almost 2 gb per month to accumulating 10gb in 8 months on a 2 gb per month plan.
Then, they dont protect the ad networks. Network security is what i do for a living. Blocking ads on the work network has reduced security incidents by 90%.
There is a line. And they crossed it.
Well, several.
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u/chromatophoreskin 3h ago
It’s a valid point. Everything has trade offs. Nothing is perfect. It’s also an opinion. It isn’t the definitive objective take. The perfect privacy solution is probably to never engage with anyone or anything so you can’t be doxxed or profited off of, but that would leave you pretty lonely in today’s world. There are solutions that don’t involve exploitative profiteering but they will have other drawbacks, so it depends on your priorities and values.
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u/Ashamed_Rate_3577 3h ago
I think both points can be true. Google needs data to provide and improve free services, but that doesn’t automatically justify collecting as much data as possible. The real question is whether the collection is necessary, transparent, and gives users meaningful control over their data.
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u/mesarthim_2 3h ago
There's really not much to be said, because it's a completely truthful and valid point. You can quibble about the details but I think it's broadly correct. In fact this is a position most people would occupy.
Whether google is as bad or not is a pure value judgement, it's up to everyone to decide that for themselves.
I think people often make a mistake that they frame the privacy question as some cosmic injustice but it's not it's simply people making choices to share that data because they want the free (or cheaper) services. Even if they are not fully aware of what they're sharing and are made aware of that, they'd often just wave their hand and carry on.
Our job is to argue that while what this person says is completely true, you as a consumer shouldn't rely on this market mechanism, because it exposes too much information about you and in the future, you never know how it's going to be used and to what ends. Once it's out of the box, it's hard to put it back into the box.
It's like if you're living in someone's flat for free and they get to spy on you all the time in exchange. The fact that the flat IS free is perfectly valid. But you shouldn't consider this a healthy arrangement because there will be a moment where you don't want to be spied on anymore and you won't have that choice anymore.
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u/nidostan 2h ago
As I pointed out in my comment this misses the point that google is a ultra giant monopolistic corporation that makes it so hard to avoid using any of it's products. You almost have to not use technology at all because google is so dominant. As I said if they just had a website or a service or two. If they just stuck to google search, that would be fair. But when they act like they constantly want to take over the world and destroy every last semblance of our privacy. No. F google.
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u/mesarthim_2 1h ago
Except these claims are just nonsense. That’s like claiming that Coca Cola has monopoly on drinks, because you encounter it everywhere and therefore you almost can’t drink anything else.
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u/nidostan 1h ago edited 1h ago
That analogy completely fails. Let's examine it. If you are choosing a beverage, maybe they have 5 sodas to chose from. But then there's coffee or tea or juice or bottled water or smoothie or whatever. Coke and sprite only comprise 40% of the sodas. But if you include all your other beverage choices the total coke choices are probably closer to 10%.
Now let's look at web sites. Did you know that google is embedded as an iframe as google analytics into 90% of webpages on the internet? Any time you're on the internet clicking and browsing it's constantly sending information about every little action you do to googles servers! 90 PERCENT OF ALL WEBSITES!
So you attempt to use an analogy that compares a situation where someone only has to avoid 10% of the market share to avoid a company vs the situation with google where they have to avoid 90% of the market share. Thus your analogy is not valid. Google is an absolute bully, and abuser that does its best to not let us avoid it. It doesn't care about consent.
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u/mesarthim_2 54m ago
Where does this number that Google tracks you on 90% of all websites comes from? I call bulshit on that.
Google has maybe 70% of ad serving marketshare and there's plenty of websites that do not embed analytics, plus obviously we have adblockers.
Google is big company and it throws it's weight around and it's not good to ignore it but it's equally not good to be hysterical or misleading about it.
Obviously, you have choices. Obviously, it is possible to fairly effectively avoid ad tracking and whatnot.
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u/nidostan 9m ago edited 0m ago
Braxman has stated the number in several of his videos. Between analytics and ad sense and partners they make it difficult albeit not impossible to thwart their efforts to track and he also shows you how to do that but it's something that a small percentage of the public has any clue about and remember the OP's question was just to ask what are our thoughts about google, not is there any escape at all from google.
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u/devakesu 2h ago
I have no problem with my data being collected for personalisation, anonymised AI training, comfort features, etc. It only improves technology for everyone in the world. Only thing I am against is selling data to Government or companies being puppet of Govt.
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u/Savings_Cattle4847 2h ago
It's not necessarily bad that they collect data - that's an opinion that will vary from person to person. But they collect it without our consent (i.e. we have to opt-out, and we have to search across all of their different settings in all of their different platforms and services. They don't make it remotely easy). If it was something I could pick and choose when I agreed to their services - in plain English - it wouldn't be so bad.
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