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turtle_ | 3 years ago

I recently left Google after spending a few years there.

Internally Google puts a huge premium on user safety and privacy. So much so that shipping anything requires getting changes through a regulatory process to safeguard users.

Google doesn’t do a good job of marketing its process. In some domains Google does explicitly use user behavior to drive revenue, so from the outside it becomes easy to spin changes like this as encroaching on user privacy, but I don’t see that here. I see something like a PM who is trying to surface some more functionality to users directly, and some engineers who spent far too long with lawyers to get sign off on this change.

It may be fashionable to sensationalize product changes like this, but the truth is often more mundane.

Edit: found a comment from the PM themselves in a previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30174304

discuss

order

titzer|3 years ago

> Internally Google puts a huge premium on user safety and privacy.

It's Orwellian doublethink. Google will go miles out of its way to convince itself it gives a damn about user privacy, when it obviously does not give a damn about user privacy. Google always finds a way to justify studying users like lab rats. For Google, they believe that they are inherently in your circle of trust and that they are allowed to know anything they want to know about you because they are by default, up to nothing but good.

Google fundamentally does not understand that keeping things private means keeping things private from Google.

If you aren't paying Google, then they are harvesting your attention, activities, preferences, and future spending habits to eventually sell to the highest bidder.

judge2020|3 years ago

Google's entire business hinges on user privacy from everyone other than Google. If, tomorrow, either this Account Security scenario happened[0] or this South Park website happened[1] (everyone's internet history searchably by anyone), and it was done at the incompetence of Google, they would crumble overnight. They might recover within a year or two if they release a statement and fix it within a few hours or something, but it would be devastating and they would have to kiss their entire Google Cloud business (encompassing Cloud Platform and Workspace) goodbye.

Once more, even for their ad business, they don't sell that data, they target based off of it. They would lose their competitive data advantage overnight if someone could pay them $100 per-user for every user's full advertising profile since they could then go behind Google's back and out-header-bid Google with lower margins.

0: https://youtu.be/y4GB_NDU43Q

1: https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/TrollTrace.com

short_sells_poo|3 years ago

I agree with what you are saying. Google undoubtedly puts a lot of emphasis on security and privacy against external threats. In other words, it is unlikely that google systems would be hacked and user secrets be leaked. I can be relatively confident that script kiddies won't hack the Gmail servers and download everyone's data.

However, Google most definitely puts no value in privacy in the holistic sense of the word, because as you say they'll willfully harvest every last bit of information, sensitive or not, that users store at Google. Google cannot be given a shred of trust with private data, because they have time and time again demonstrated to have no moral compass in this respect.

They may take a lot of care about protecting this data from others, but they don't care at all about protecting the data from themselves.

skummetmaelk|3 years ago

> If you aren't paying Google, then they are harvesting your attention, activities, preferences, and future spending habits to eventually sell to the highest bidder.

Do they stop if you pay them?

Narishma|3 years ago

> If you aren't paying Google, then they are harvesting your attention, activities, preferences, and future spending habits to eventually sell to the highest bidder.

And paying them won't guarantee that they won't do those things either. Look at what Microsoft is doing with Windows.

codeflo|3 years ago

Let’s say I give you a box with two lights to show its state, one green and one red. Currently, the red light is on. The red light will also be on tomorrow. In fact, people who have observed this box for years have only ever seen it show red.

You might argue that this box is simply hard-wired to show red, but then I explain: No, your impression is wrong. I’ve built this box, and I’ve taken every possible measure to make it show green.

How credible am I?

And would you be more inclined to believe me more if I told you about my intrinsic love for the color green, and how I wired up the green light first, and how I have an entire committee of experts that has to sign off every design change to this box to ensure sufficient greenness? While it still shows, and only ever will, show the red light?

briskapple|3 years ago

The green light is on, you just can't see it.

salawat|3 years ago

Related phenomena: There are four lights! [Star Trek:TNG] 2+2=5 [1984] Gaslighting

avgcorrection|3 years ago

> It may be fashionable to sensationalize product changes like this, but the truth is often more mundane.

A company which relies on user data for its revenue using user data seems like a mundane explanation to me.

JacobThreeThree|3 years ago

The comment really doesn't explain why Google had to do an automatic opt-in.

testesttest|3 years ago

You sure you were not just out of the loop? Engineers are often not included because they would object. You were only there a few years so I doubt you were privy to much of the politics.

seanw444|3 years ago

While it may not be intentionally sinister, it's a precedent I can't agree with. Been on a journey to self-host as much of my stuff as I can to avoid this crap.

johnklos|3 years ago

See, this just doesn't pass the bullshit test. Look at Google's history and ask whether this could possibly be true. Could it? Really? Yes, but only if we posit that Google is hiding their nefarious activity from their own employees.

Look at stuff like this:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/28/google_data_privacy/

Is this the Google you left? If so, one really needs to ask is whether we should be even more worried about a company that hides its evil from its own employees than about a company that's just plainly shitty.

ronnier|3 years ago

google collects all your information and device info. They can also tie together all of your devices and accounts. They then share that info with the state and law enforcement.

SSLy|3 years ago

Is the GDPR-breaking consent flow also result of some bored PM?