Really? because there are many examples of smaller less sophisticated companies getting owned by hackers. ADT might not do anything with your data, but hackers have lots of uses for it.
So in your world, Google being able to sell target ads is more dangerous to you, then hackers getting access to your security cams or baby monitors, or stealing your personal dox and reselling them on darknet markets for bitcoin?
There are millions of people who have been harmed by identity theft from databases going around of people's personal info that have been hacked from less secure companies.
You have millions of people scammed by Indian call center scammers by taking advantage of terrible Windows security.
You have tons of scammers buying people's personal financial information from existing databases that are traded.
These are all real, palpable harm, where people have gone bankrupt, spent years cleaning up identity theft, had their children's room monitored by pedophiles and pranksters, etc
> You have millions of people scammed by Indian call center scammers by taking advantage of terrible Windows security.
You know where all of those scams come from? Targeted Google Ads... So yeah, Google being able to sell and target ads is extremely dangerous, especially when they enable ads to be targeted at vulnerable populations like senior citizens.
Funny story, the attack chain here starts with Google Ads, usually to push a Google Chrome extension in the Chrome Web Store, and then people end up letting a scammer onto their PC. And yet "terrible Windows security" is what you are worried about?
I have been asking Google and Googlers alike to address these concerns for years, and Google's movement on it is far too slow, because the systems they use are far too profitable to change.
> You know where all of those scams come from? Targeted Google Ads
No, quite a number of them are done via SMS and VoiceMail spam, e.g. Robocalls. What, you've never gotten a text or voicemail threatening you with a federal bench warrant unless you call up and pay money?
I've actually spent a very large portion of time over the past decade helping seniors deal with scams, and figuring out where they came from. I trace back every scam call I deal with to how they got to it. Google is the top offender. And malicious, scammy ads that push malware have actually been reinstated by Google only hours after I've gotten a Googler to take it down.
Here are screenshots of malware showing on the top search I see seniors search for, tested just now: https://imgur.com/a/rIAMjpM
Google sells scammers the ability to squat the trademark of a competitor, MapQuest (very likely illegal in it's own right, no ads are served on a search for "google maps"), which is commonly searched by senior citizens. The ad is barely perceptible from a real, organic result, and claims to be MapQuest. And the result is a page that only functions when you install a malicious web browser on your PC.
What's incredible here, is that you'll blame Microsoft for your company's ad platform, make MapQuest look bad (because you served a fake MapQuest site to people looking for it), and promote Google Maps and Chromebooks as an alternative... all while raking in the cash from the scam ads. Google is a business that operates on the revenue from scams. Every supposedly good thing Google does, and every paycheck it issues, is coming from ripped off individuals. The entire product cycle and marketing direction reinforces this.
This search term has seen nothing but malware and scams since at least 2013. If Google had any interest in protecting consumers (or not violating antitrust and, honestly, trademark laws), Google would not serve ads on this search term, ever. Feel free to investigate this internally, I am confident nothing will change.
> Google is a business that operates on the revenue from scams
I highly doubt these scams make up a significant fraction of Google's revenue. It is much more likely these are simply the failures of false negatives in automation falling through the cracks.
Besides the ad target scams, the Web itself is full of these scam malware sites. If you search for things to download, organic search results often send you links which eventually terminate in malware, especially true of searches for porn, software/music/movies.
I will raise this MapsQuest scam internally, so thanks for the report (note, I have nothing to do with ads, I work in research thats not ads related)
Probably nobody cares, and there's nobody in particular I would like to tell this to, but I recently experienced a Google service that made me feel more positive about them, even though I have eaten up the negativity recently to a certain extent.
That service is the call screening. Where you can (I'm not sure if it's standard on all Android phones, but I have a Pixel 3) have your virtual assistant talk to an unknown caller and transcribe whatever they say (but they always hang up).
It just made me momentarily feel so much better about Google, the sense that this one little thing actually improves my life by leveraging the dystopian tech infrastructure. I don't hate the bots that much, I hate them not working for me.
I just thought I'd share this because you must be bombarded with anti-Google stuff these days.
> the sense that this one little thing actually improves my life by leveraging the dystopian tech infrastructure. I don't hate the bots that much, I hate them not working for me.
The problem is, you have become part of the problem. Because the bot working for you is now annoying other people. Surely, you realize the companies that employ annoying bots all hate dealing with them themselves, but it improves their lives to subject you to them.
I don't think so, because to me the annoyance experienced by people who make unsolicited calls to me isn't important. It's not part of "the problem" from my perspective.
So in your world, Google being able to sell target ads is more dangerous to you, then hackers getting access to your security cams or baby monitors, or stealing your personal dox and reselling them on darknet markets for bitcoin?
There are millions of people who have been harmed by identity theft from databases going around of people's personal info that have been hacked from less secure companies.
There was have been cheap IP cams that have had backdoors that were exploited, unbelievably, to build a search engine for readily available for pedophiles (https://ipvm.com/reports/the-search-engine-for-hacking-ip-ca...)
You have millions of people scammed by Indian call center scammers by taking advantage of terrible Windows security.
You have tons of scammers buying people's personal financial information from existing databases that are traded.
These are all real, palpable harm, where people have gone bankrupt, spent years cleaning up identity theft, had their children's room monitored by pedophiles and pranksters, etc