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An Evaluation of Google - Power at a Price

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,285
So Google has been criticized MANY times now and in the past of spying on users and selling that data. This is all but confirmed. And since Google is such a behemoth in the tech world as well as having lobbyists in Washington, it's no wonder people are so against them. And yet, millions of users still use its services, most notably its incredibly powerful search engine.

In the past, sites that provided news, download services, social networking features, and other things for free were funded by ads on the page. It was a widely accepted notion that if you browsed the web, then banner ads just naturally came right along with that. And that was how it was for a long time. But then, as we know, the ads began to more obnoxious, invasive, and downright harmful, and with the rise in popularity of browser extensions, it was almost inevitable that ad blockers would take off.

The ad blocker soon became almost standard operating equipment for the average web user. And as it became more and more ubiquitous for users, the viability of ads started to seriously drop. This was also during the time that MySpace and Facebook were taking off. I don't know exactly how it started, but it was realized that there was yet another way for popular sites to make money that didn't rely on advertisements.

Enter the proliferation of selling user data. It wasn't long before it was found out that companies were starting to engage in this practice to support their sites and even to make a profit. The backlash was slow but steady, thus bringing us to where we are now. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has already been pulled into court to answer for these things. Tensions are high. And thus, we come back to Google.

Now companies like Google that rely on the trading of user data are more or less backed into a hard place. Facebook and Google could start charging for their services, but that would be a very hard pill to swallow for consumers. So I believe that Google continues to do these things because it believes that in order to provide such massive and wide-ranging services, it has to do these dirty deals.

And lets not kid ourselves here. Google has QUITE the expenses they need to pay in order to support all these features and power. Just in the US alone, they have huge server farms. And all of them requiring maintenance, power, and labor costs. How is Google going to pay for these things without charging users money? I don't know. I don't have that answer. Maybe if we're truly against our data being sold and shared, we'll just have to bite the bullet of a monthly fee. But if not, I think we all have only two options here. Either stop using Google services entirely, or accept that Google can have our data.
 

bluegate

Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
292
Meh, I don't mind Google creating an ad-profile based on what kind of sites I visit, the benefits from their software far outweigh the negatives for me, so for the time being I'm a happy user of Google products.
 

Vendor-Lazarus

Arch Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
937
All things in moderation.
I wouldn't mind them mining some user data, anonymized. Nor would I mind some ads, discreet and non-intrusive.
I absolutely don't think paywalls should exist on the internet.

That said, nothing forces or forced Google to expand into more than they can handle.
Plus, a monopoly is never good for consumers.
If Google remove or have a subsidiary venture fail, another company could and rightly should step in.

There are already alternatives to most things today. I've even contemplated doing a thread about such things.
We've got DuckDuckGo instead of Google Search.
Gab instead of Twitter.
Bitchute instead of Youtube.
Voat instead of Reddit.
Minds instead of Facebook.
Etc, etc.
 

Signa

Libertarian Contrarian
Sanctuary legend
Messages
764
Vendor-Lazarus said:
All things in moderation.
I wouldn't mind them mining some user data, anonymized. Nor would I mind some ads, discreet and non-intrusive.
I absolutely don't think paywalls should exist on the internet.

That said, nothing forces or forced Google to expand into more than they can handle.
Plus, a monopoly is never good for consumers.
If Google remove or have a subsidiary venture fail, another company could and rightly should step in.

There are already alternatives to most things today. I've even contemplated doing a thread about such things.
We've got DuckDuckGo instead of Google Search.
Gab instead of Twitter.
Bitchute instead of Youtube.
Voat instead of Reddit.
Minds instead of Facebook.
Etc, etc.
I've tried duck duck go, but virtually every time I use it I have to run the search again in Google to get actually useful results. It's a shame.
 

bluegate

Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
292
Signa said:
Vendor-Lazarus said:
All things in moderation.
I wouldn't mind them mining some user data, anonymized. Nor would I mind some ads, discreet and non-intrusive.
I absolutely don't think paywalls should exist on the internet.

That said, nothing forces or forced Google to expand into more than they can handle.
Plus, a monopoly is never good for consumers.
If Google remove or have a subsidiary venture fail, another company could and rightly should step in.

There are already alternatives to most things today. I've even contemplated doing a thread about such things.
We've got DuckDuckGo instead of Google Search.
Gab instead of Twitter.
Bitchute instead of Youtube.
Voat instead of Reddit.
Minds instead of Facebook.
Etc, etc.
I've tried duck duck go, but virtually every time I use it I have to run the search again in Google to get actually useful results. It's a shame.
That's my experience also when I use DuckDuckGo when searching for some specialized technology related things, because of search histories Google knows what kind of articles or websites I am looking for, DuckDuckGo just throws up random results that are somewhat similar but aren't what I'm actually looking for.

Although Google's "bubble" can be a 'dangerous' thing if one isn't aware of it, it can be highly helpful in situations.
 

Vendor-Lazarus

Arch Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
937
I must confess to using Google Search myself, unless it deals with sensitive matters.. ..

It is very creepy the way Google narrows down one's location though..
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,285
Vendor-Lazarus said:
I must confess to using Google Search myself, unless it deals with sensitive matters.. ..

It is very creepy the way Google narrows down one's location though..
That's just common GPS.
 

Signa

Libertarian Contrarian
Sanctuary legend
Messages
764
Arnox said:
Vendor-Lazarus said:
I must confess to using Google Search myself, unless it deals with sensitive matters.. ..

It is very creepy the way Google narrows down one's location though..
That's just common GPS.
It also uses your ip address. A VPN fixes that easily
 

Vendor-Lazarus

Arch Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
937
Signa said:
Arnox said:
That's just common GPS.
It also uses your ip address. A VPN fixes that easily
Arnox said:
Vendor-Lazarus said:
I must confess to using Google Search myself, unless it deals with sensitive matters.. ..

It is very creepy the way Google narrows down one's location though..
That's just common GPS.
I don't have a GPS in my computer. ,)
Nor is my IP static. My ISP uses a dynamic one.
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,285
Vendor-Lazarus said:
I don't have a GPS in my computer. ,)
Nor is my IP static. My ISP uses a dynamic one.
Doesn't matter actually. Your IP address can still determine (very roughly) where you are.
 

Signa

Libertarian Contrarian
Sanctuary legend
Messages
764
Vendor-Lazarus said:
Signa said:
It also uses your ip address. A VPN fixes that easily
Arnox said:
That's just common GPS.
I don't have a GPS in my computer. ,)
Nor is my IP static. My ISP uses a dynamic one.
ISPs generally assign an IP range to a neighborhood. I used to have to monitor my public up constantly, and not only would it rarely change (despite not being static) the first two octets never changed when I would get reassigned.
 

Vendor-Lazarus

Arch Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
937
Signa said:
Vendor-Lazarus said:
I don't have a GPS in my computer. ,)
Nor is my IP static. My ISP uses a dynamic one.
ISPs generally assign an IP range to a neighborhood. I used to have to monitor my public up constantly, and not only would it rarely change (despite not being static) the first two octets never changed when I would get reassigned.
I've checked myself quite a few times, and sometimes it is roughly in the neighborhood.
Though most of the time it could as well be in Finland, Denmark or Germany.
 
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