How Google pioneered the "surveillance capitalism" business model

[Eadwine Rose]

When I google on my name the results are all benign. I just found my old tweets, had a good laugh about them. On youtube found mostly cat videos, my sewing machine on flickr, a mention on the Mepis forum from back in 2008, and the rest is this forum for the quick run through I did.

The general rule applies with everything, whether you use google, bing, yahoo, whatever: if you don't want it on the internet, don't put it on the internet.

[Artim]

There are alternatives to these platforms:

• Instead of Facebook try Diaspora, Friendica, or Hubzilla (but beware of this and this).

• Instead of Google try Duck Duck Go or Startpage.

• Instead of Twitter try Mastodon (but again, this).

I honestly don't use any of them anymore, except Gmail as a "junk mail" address that I never check, and Facebook because some family members insist on it - again, rarely ever checked.

[LU344928]

For me. Yes I was logged in to Google. I always am when my computer is on.

I think you'd get quite different results using Tor browser.

[LU344928]

Well Rich.. you cannot win. If people are dead set against google they will find and use any and all arguments to spout and show you it is bad.

Fact is google has behaved badly:

'Google suffered a major blow on Tuesday after European antitrust officials fined the search giant a record $2.7 billion for unfairly favoring some of its own services over those of rivals.'
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/tech ... -fine.html

And more recently:

'Texas will lead a joint state investigation into Google over antitrust concerns, state Attorney General Ken Paxton announces'
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/09/texas-a ... probe.html

'Attorneys general for 48 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico are launching probes into whether Google is violating antitrust law.'
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-ant ... -and-data/

[Eadwine Rose]

Mod note:
just a reminder: viewtopic.php?p=255061#p255061

[AK-47]

'Google suffered a major blow on Tuesday after European antitrust officials fined the search giant a record $2.7 billion for unfairly favoring some of its own services over those of rivals.'
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/tech ... -fine.html

This doesn't add to any case of Google behaving badly. Google is just doing exactly what businesses are meant to do, and it's people who decide to use their services. That's what you want for any business regardless of size.

'Texas will lead a joint state investigation into Google over antitrust concerns, state Attorney General Ken Paxton announces'
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/09/texas-a ... probe.html

'Attorneys general for 48 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico are launching probes into whether Google is violating antitrust law.'
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-ant ... -and-data/

Launching investigations and probes doesn't automatically mean someone is guilty, it just means someone is suspected of doing something wrong. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for investigations and probes of wrongdoings, but let's wait until the conclusions of the investigations are available from a reliable source before making conclusions. Everyone including Google has the right to a fair trial, and these investigations are just stages of discovery, to find evidence. Many investigations reveal insufficient evidence to prove a wrongdoing.

[tascoast]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-29/ ... a/11649356

[Pierre]

it seems that tascoast didn't elaborate:

Tech giant Google has been hauled into the Federal Court by regulators over allegations,
it has been misleading consumers about the personal location data it collects, keeps and uses.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said it was the first time a regulator anywhere in world had taken on the global giant, which has a current market value of about $US880 billion (A1.3 trillion), over the alleged misuse of personal data