> And it's a bit of exaggeration when people gets worried about privacy when they voluntarily submit the data to the very machines they fear. Don
While a valid point, I signed up to g+ and then logged out permanently as I didn't want all my data submitted to a single company (i.e. Google has my search, calendar and gmail) I don't like that they have so much in one spot already but I certainly wasn't going to give them social as well.
I think that everyone likes to have an element of anonymity online and this lets Google have a much clearer idea of the kind of person you are by tying these together.
While we on HN might be clever ones that realise all the data we're putting out there there's a whole world of lay people that have no idea. I assume the outrage isn't so much about the people in the know, but about your grandmother not realising what she's volunteering.
I can't believe people are making such a fuss about a non-issue. Google isn't being 'evil' by aggregating data from all its properties. I'm surprised they hadn't been doing this already!
Think about it. If you owned Facebook and Microsoft, wouldn't you want to co-relate the data in Facebook with Windows? For example, to see how many users of Windows 7 use Facebook, and how it affects bounce rates? Do you think companies don't already do this (Bing and Microsoft, Safari and iTunes, etc.)?
Do you think Google ALREADY wasn't co-relating data from its different properties? And what exactly is wrong with that anyways? You'd have to be pretty naive (and unreasonable) to expect a parent company not to have access to data from all its subsidiary operations. How does one "opt-out" of letting Windows co-relate data with Internet Explorer, short of just not using one of them?
Have you ever tried visiting https://www.google.com/dashboard/? This page shows you all the accounts and information Google associates with your account. This was always the case. All that's changed is that the privacy policies associated with all of these disparate accounts have been combined and simplified.
You CAN opt-out of the Google tracking for ads here: http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/ I've known about this option for ages but haven't used it, simply because I respect Google's approach here. I'd like to see Facebook offer a similar option.
While a valid point, I signed up to g+ and then logged out permanently as I didn't want all my data submitted to a single company (i.e. Google has my search, calendar and gmail) I don't like that they have so much in one spot already but I certainly wasn't going to give them social as well.
I think that everyone likes to have an element of anonymity online and this lets Google have a much clearer idea of the kind of person you are by tying these together.
While we on HN might be clever ones that realise all the data we're putting out there there's a whole world of lay people that have no idea. I assume the outrage isn't so much about the people in the know, but about your grandmother not realising what she's volunteering.