Larry Page Issues Public Update On Google Changes 159
itwbennett writes "Larry Page just wants to be loved. Well, he wants 'Google to be a company that is deserving of great love,' Page wrote in a public letter. But he also wants to offer the kind of personalized service that the requires trampling on your privacy. 'The recent changes we made to our privacy policies generated a lot of interest. But they will enable us to create a much better, more intuitive experience across Google — our key focus for the year,' Page wrote."
From the letter: "Think about basic actions like sharing or recommendations. When you find a great article, you want to share that knowledge with people who will find it interesting, too. If you see a great movie, you want to recommend it to friends. Google+ makes sharing super easy by creating a social layer across all our products so users connect with the people who matter to them." With all the claims of altruistic intent in the open letter, one might wonder why Google has to push their own social network instead of working on open protocols for sharing.
More iffy Slashdot editorial (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not really a Google fan. I deleted quite a lot of my information when they announced the privacy policy change. I don't use Google+.
But, really, "why didn't Google work on Diaspora"? Give me a break.
here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
how about when searching via google you actually get links related to your search, instead of everything others have tagged their pages with?
Oh, but that is not something google can do.
Now everyone knows how to take down the usefulness of google, have at it...
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Here, let me Google that for you: (Score:2, Insightful)
"Buy 'open protocols for sharing' at Walmart!"
Intuitive = Intrusive (Score:5, Insightful)
Spin it any way you want, if your goal is to have a system that just 'feels like it knows me' then it HAS to collect data on you to personalize the experience.
Re:Simple... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I think there would be for Google. I'd argue that they should be concentrating on keeping the web from being swallowed up by huge sites like Facebook, which will develop their own advertising and revenue streams. If they supported an open platform for social networking, it's more likely that the landscape would comprise a bunch of smaller players--who would get their revenue through Google ads.
I think this is essentially their strategy with Android. It's a better strategy than going into direct competition with Facebook, which has got them--and will continue to get them--nowhere.
Re:More iffy Slashdot editorial (Score:5, Insightful)
FTS: "one might wonder why Google has to push their own social network instead of working on open protocols for sharing."
Right, like Facebook is gonna share with Google.
(And nobody else really matters...)
Re:I stopped reading pretty quickly (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't Look Evil
Eh, that's close enough.
Can't have it both ways (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that for all the cool stuff they build and make available, Google is an advertising agency. Their core job is to get advertisers to spend money on ads targeted at you. I'm a little bit older than the current "millenial" crowd who is supposed to be influencing the future of computing, and I find some of the stuff Facebook, Google and other advertisers do very creepy. Not in a tinfoil hat kind of way, but in a "I'm not totally comfortable with an advertising agency knowing everything I search for, every YouTube video I watch, every email I send if I use Gmail, who my acquaintances are and what I like if I use Google+ -- and then using that to build a package to sell to an advertiser."
Facebook and Google have done a very good job eradicating this creepy feeling from the younger set. They're very smart about it too -- Facebook is incredibly easy to use and fun for people to post pictures and share all their personal information. Google is incredibly useful -- I'd be lost without their search engine or mapping features embedded in the iPhone. When you grow up using a certain set of technology, and have been posting everything about yourself on Facebook since you were 7, I can see why a person might pull out the tinfoil hat designation on someone like me. Privacy policy change or not, people aren't going to stop using the service they love until something happens. I think what's going to happen eventually is that some people might realize they're sharing too much, not get a job because of their social media profile, or maybe just get the creepy feeling I was talking about. (Example: I went online to check airfare to a city I need to be in next month, and this morning, up pops a Delta ad offering low low fares to that city. It's not a big deal because I've never clicked on an advertisement or sponsored link in my life, so they don't directly make any money off me. It's just the feeling that another record got added to Google's database about my set of cookies.)
So yeah, it's not so much that they collect your data -- everyone knows that. It's the fact that your profile is readily accessible and way more plugged into your life than was previously possible. Before the current age of zero privacy, constructing a profile on someone meant digging through a lot of different sources of information, most of which were not accessible directly. It's the same argument that prevents national electronic health records from being implemented -- there's always the possibility that someone knowing what's in these can negatively affect you (medical/life insurance companies would love that kind of access, for example.) If Google and the like want to keep this kind of model going, I think they're going to have to be a little less overt about it.
Re:More iffy Slashdot editorial (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Intuitive = Intrusive (Score:3, Insightful)
plus.. won
seriously, there is a give and take. I hadn't really connected the dots on what all of this info meant until I met with microsoft research.. some of the really cool stuff they are doing, they can only do because they have systems in place that will collect a STUPID amount of data. regardless of if it's immediately apparent that it'll be needed.
you just can't allow a computer to make correlation and causation decisions without having the massive amount of info available to it.. that we as humans (with our fancy sensor arrays) take for granted.
Fuck G+ (Score:0, Insightful)
I am an early adopter of Google. I brought dozens of people to Google and Gmail because I am the guy people ask for technical advice.
I don't care if Google tries to emulate Facebook. It's pathetic but it doest need to concern me. but when G+ started to influence other services it became personal. I paid for Google Apps and now they hired an incompetent designer to fuck it all up. I don't need avatar in my business apps. I don't want the abortion that is the "new look" and I for sure don't want to be nagged about it every hour.
I have made it a mission for me to convince people to move away from Google and G+ in particular. Asshole Paige made a big mistake in pissing off his most loyal customers.
Re:Here's a tip. (Score:5, Insightful)
The instant search on by default and having to turn it off every time I image a computer is awesome.
The annoying as shit "+you" button and increased social media results are awesome.
The increased ads on google itself are awesome.
Google's intrusive changes to it's privacy policy are awesome (this is one I've only heard about, I don't care myself, but a lot of people seem to)
The annoying as shit changes to iGoogle are awesome
The loss of functionality on youtube is awesome.
Dude, I could go on and fucking on, I think I do know why google's bugging the shit out of me.
Re:Intuitive = Intrusive (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would I need a system to 'feel like it knows me'? I already know me. I don't need my computer to remind me what I like.
Re:Open protocols won't help... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's because the old school web was/is largely built around old schools! Students and staff had access to Internet connected machines where they could plop random web pages and services that would be available 24x7. We continue to do that, now often hosting our own wikis where we used to have static web pages: for research groups, open source projects funded by research budgets, etc.
The modern expansion of the web has added very asymmetric users who have transient, NAT-hidden presence. Their default solution is to publish content is to use some intermediary like wikipedia or facebook to host the content for them. This has gone on long enough that it's changed the culture of the web. Most users don't even think about alternatives.
You see many companies falling somewhere in the middle. They can host content but it is often in a separate hosting facility, not quite the same as our universities (where every desktop has a public IPv4 address and essentially optional firewalls).
Also, misses the facts (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, that, and the fact that google didn't push their own social network instead of working on open protocols for sharing.
Google has pushed a number of open standards for information exchange, both in general and in the social space specifically.
They also are pushing their own social network.
they are beginning to piss me off (Score:4, Insightful)
"It is far better to be feared than loved" -- Niccolo Machiavelli.
That is NOT to say that one should strive to be feared. Only that one's conduct should inspire awe.
And for all this emphasis on protocols, they forget the key ingredient to success in the business in which they now find themselves: tools win over developers. Developers will not flock to the best hypothetical outcome. They will flock to the best outcome in their circumstance. And the circumstances of developers are improved tremendously with improvement in tools.
Android has 50% of the phone market and less than 20% of the app market. Why? Because there is still no cloud server presence from Google (only cloud storage). And there is still no developer studio. As a result there is still no way to develop for Android as your first choice.
Google apps? Yeah, that's nice. That's effectively a bunch of libraries with some clever hacks. That's not gonna make me wanna develop for Android. They've hired thousands of highly competitive developers and they still haven't created an environment which enables developers outside the company in the way that MS did and in the way in which Apple did.
When you have clever workers and you don't produce a clever product, the problem is the management. Until I see the kinds of tools coming out of Google that would elicit spontaneous rants about "sexy", I don't give a hoot about a founder's fetish to press new shiny buttons.
Re:More iffy Slashdot editorial (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that Google made it exceedingly easy for you to delete the information it has on you did not make you a fan?
And it was not an all or nothing thing either. I could choose what to delete and what to keep.
Would someone pass this on to Google? (Score:1, Insightful)
Would someone pass this on to Google? Surely someone here has a connection. Sorry for posting as AC, but I feel more comfortable with some anonymity. You never know who is watching your every move.
Dear Google:
We're through. Once I loved you, but now it's over. Oh, it will take me awhile, a long while, to get shut of you, but make no mistake, it's over.
It's not me, it's you. I haven't changed, but you have. Once the deal was you gave me free email, news, and search and I looked at your ads, and I paid you for online photo storage, and you gave it to me. Oh, and you also promised not to be evil.
Now I can't tell what our deal is, but I'm pretty sure what you're offering is that you will gather every bit of information you can find on me through any source possible, and sell it to anyone who will pay for it, and sometimes, you'll just give it away. Every where, all the time, forever. In return I get access to your decaying product base.
Yes, you want it all. Just about every web site I go to, you've got your slimy little fingers there, tracking me. And on my phone, if I have GPS on, you are literally recording every step I take. So basically you are trying to completely record every possible thing you can about me. Oh, and screw you and your privacy policies. I know corporate doublespeak when I see it.
Yes, your product base is decaying. I haven't seen much new or interesting in awhile. Gmail has some strong points, but certain features have been missing so long its obvious that you don't care about the products. For instance, there's no way to automatically save sent items in the inbox. So every so often, I move messages manually. Forever. Let's talk about news. Have you actually looked at Google News lately? It's actually gotten pretty lame when compared to other news sources. There's just not much there. And Picasa. Wow, you *really* made a mess on that one. Picasa had promise, but in the last year or so all the Picasa efforts have gone into Google Plus. What do I know, but I have no use for Google Plus for sharing photos. I share photos with my family, and my volunteer organization. I was pretty happy with the way it was. G+ is certainly NOT the answer. Everything I ever wanted to do with photos, you've broken it. Google Sites. Pathetic. Google maps. Once pretty clever, now a technology laggard. And Android. I curse you Google at least once a day. First there was the inexplicable Google Talk authentication error that went on forever. Oh wait, before that. Has it ever occured to you that people might want to sort their address book by last name? You know that's how we've been doing it for quite awhile now, right? And "Google Play". Pathetic. The name makes me ill.
Oh yeah, about the don't be evil part. When we were young it was kinda cute. Sure, it was naive, but it seemed your heart was in the right place. Now it's taken on tones of doublespeak. You know, "war is peace". Like that. Now when you say "don't be evil", what you mean now is "Here at Google we aren't evil because we've moved past all that. Evil is a concept for mere mortals. We have higher standards. Besides puny humans, who are YOU to judge ME? Muah, hah, hah, hah!" Attempting to track my every move is by definition evil. It creates a power differenial that I can't mitigate. Your desire to collect everything reminds me of totalitarian states. Communist Russa. communist Romania, for god sake. North Korea. And I won't even mention you-know-what. Godwin's law, you know.
Oh, and Facebook? That you want to be so much like? They're evil, too. By the way, social media as a concept isn't evil, it's wanting to track people that's evil. Create a Facebook killer that doesn't track its users, and Facebook will become a distant memory.
There's only one way to deal with a power imbalance. Guerilla tactics. First of all, I'm going to do my best to never look at an ad you serve, ever again. And if I do, I'll write the ad buyer and give them a copy of this. And I will speak badly of you. To everyon
Re:More iffy Slashdot editorial (Score:2, Insightful)
Well seeing as how I recently dumped FF 11 in favor of IE because of the damn devs deciding that I Need to Trust Every effen Root C/A before I can even add an exception - Like none of them ever got hacked. Sorry but MS at least gets it right in that the user/admin is in charge of the computer, not the fucking devs who's smoking/drinking god only knows what. Yes I'm a bit pissed at FF for screwing with MY Security Settings when IE9 at least allows me to do what I want, even if it's wrong.
Re:I stopped reading pretty quickly (Score:4, Insightful)
So what you are saying is that google does exactly what you want when you search when not signed in, and when you browse signed in after disabling all of the personalization results?