“Google Inc. showcased new offerings Thursday designed to embed the Internet giant more deeply into users’ lives,” Alistair Barr reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“Google began in the late 1990s as a search engine harvesting information from websites and presenting relevant answers to queries. That helped build the world’s largest digital advertising money machine. But the growing use of smartphones, and apps, has forced Google to adapt,” Barr reports. “Its main strategy is to extend Android from phones to as many devices as possible… Google has always given away its Android operating system and tried to make money indirectly through advertising and app purchases.”
“Despite a number of announcements, there was no blockbuster new product Thursday. Google shares dipped slightly during Thursday trading, leaving them down 2% over the past year, while Apple Inc. shares have risen 50%,” Barr reports. “Van Baker, an analyst at research firm Gartner, said [Google’s] Photos is part of a long-term Google strategy to use its computing expertise to gather more data. More than a decade ago, Google launched Gmail as a free email service with unlimited storage, gaining hundreds of millions of users. The company now sells ads based on the content in those messages. Mr. Baker expects Google to follow a similar approach with Photos, gaining as many users as possible, then using its computing power to analyze information and devise ways to generate revenue.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Gee, that’s a rather cheap and dusty treadmill in the background of that photo of her. Weight estimated at 180 lbs. Weight Watchers ads.
Hey, look at that pool! Chlorine ads.
Wow, these two have been to quite a few ball games and concerts. Ticketmaster ads.
Oh look, the same little girl over and over. Must be her kid. Age estimated at two. Toys R Us ads.
Hm, the house looked better in 2009; paint’s really peeling in 2015. Paint ads.
Etcetera ad infinitum.
—
A message from Tim Cook about Apple’s commitment to your privacy:
At Apple, your trust means everything to us. That’s why we respect your privacy and protect it with strong encryption, plus strict policies that govern how all data is handled.
Security and privacy are fundamental to the design of all our hardware, software, and services, including iCloud and new services like Apple Pay. And we continue to make improvements. Two-step verification, which we encourage all our customers to use, in addition to protecting your Apple ID account information, now also protects all of the data you store and keep up to date with iCloud.
We believe in telling you up front exactly what’s going to happen to your personal information and asking for your permission before you share it with us. And if you change your mind later, we make it easy to stop sharing with us. Every Apple product is designed around those principles. When we do ask to use your data, it’s to provide you with a better user experience.
We’re publishing this website to explain how we handle your personal information, what we do and don’t collect, and why. We’re going to make sure you get updates here about privacy at Apple at least once a year and whenever there are significant changes to our policies.
A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product. But at Apple, we believe a great customer experience shouldn’t come at the expense of your privacy.
Our business model is very straightforward: We sell great products. We don’t build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers. We don’t “monetize” the information you store on your iPhone or in iCloud. And we don’t read your email or your messages to get information to market to you. Our software and services are designed to make our devices better. Plain and simple.
One very small part of our business does serve advertisers, and that’s iAd. We built an advertising network because some app developers depend on that business model, and we want to support them as well as a free iTunes Radio service. iAd sticks to the same privacy policy that applies to every other Apple product. It doesn’t get data from Health and HomeKit, Maps, Siri, iMessage, your call history, or any iCloud service like Contacts or Mail, and you can always just opt out altogether.
Finally, I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.
Our commitment to protecting your privacy comes from a deep respect for our customers. We know that your trust doesn’t come easy. That’s why we have and always will work as hard as we can to earn and keep it.
Tim
Source: Apple Inc.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]
SEE ALSO:
Apple CEO Cook: Unlike some other companies, Apple won’t invade your right to privacy – March 2, 2015
Survey: People trust U.S. NSA more than Google – October 29, 2014
Apple CEO Tim Cook ups privacy to new level, takes direct swipe at Google – September 18, 2014
Apple will no longer unlock most iPhones, iPads for government, police – even with search warrants – September 18, 2014
U.S. NSA watching, tracking phone users with Google Maps – January 28, 2014
U.S. NSA secretly infiltrated Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say – October 30, 2013
Google has already inserted some U.S. NSA code into Android – July 10, 2013
Court rules NSA doesn’t have to reveal its semi-secret relationship with Google – May 22, 2013
Edward Snowden’s privacy tips: ‘Get rid of Dropbox,” avoid Facebook and Google – October 13, 2014
Oh, yes! Get ads based on products and activities found in your Photos.
yes…..by all means give them your stuff and allow them to “harvest” the data points in your life……..”trust us”……..WhAt cOuLD gO wRonG!!
All those photos have GPS location data and date and time stamps. They also have or are releasing free apps so they can collect all your e-mail history, your calendar, your “Messages”, your address book, your payments and payment history, your credit and banking accounts, etc. etc. Read the Google (no)privacy policy and learn that you give up all your privacy to Google by using their free products, and they attempt to assure that the information they collect will not fall into “the wrong hands”. With all that info they are collecting on you, plus facial recognition software Google has and continues to create a detailed history of everything about you and the people you interact with. More importantly, they use that information to predict what your future holds, and try to manipulate that future by selectively presenting information from their search services, ad services, and other services to manipulate you actions.
Google, in court documents, has revealed that the information they collect is not limited to you, but they also collect information on the people you are interacting with. With facial recognition they can track when and where other people are who show up in your photos. I really wish there were some way I could keep all you Google users away from me! I detest the idea of giving so much information to Google, or anyone, and trusting that they will not abuse it. I share Elon Musk and Bill Gates FEAR of what will come as Google develops artificial intelligence, with access to all this private information. Think about it.
Anybody remember how the sick murderer in the book Red Dragon targeted the families he slaughtered? He worked in film processing company, developing old 8/16mm home movie films. He’d learn about the family members, their home, their yard, their pets, and then plan his night mass murder. Don’t share your archive of photos and videos with any company like Google. You never know who will be able profile you and your family for worse than ad placements.
I suspected as much. My first reaction was “wow, now I don’t have to pay” and then about three seconds later the next thought rolled in: “but how much privacy will I lose to Google”. The answer for me is too much. Becoming another Google product puts my photos at too much risk just for the convenience and cheapness of Google Photos. Where will my Photos end up, Google? Will they be lodged in some ad agency’s endless list of profiles? What will they be used to sell to me? How will they sell ME? What new and invasive ways will I be targeted on-line? Will photos of my kids, or derived information about them, end up in an endless marketing database from which I and my family will never emerge. I’d rather keep doing what I’m doing: keep my oversized (200gb+) photos on an external drive and carry it around. At least I know where my photos are.
I would quit Google in an instant if I could. However, there is no solid competition for it. Its search engine is the best by far. Their maps are the best.
You can quit Google, but you are brainwashed into believing that you need them. You don’t need them, they need you.
If you really want to quit Google then do it! I dare you.
The only Google property I still use is a Gmail account that I no longer send from, and only a few senders know. I never use the Gmail interface, so I don’t see any ads.
It’s really quite easy to quit Google. Try DuckDuckGo. I promise you won’t miss Google.
Yup…really frightening to think they will your pictures to go along with your voice data. I’m sure Facebook will be doing the same. There will be a day when your are simply recognized as you walk down street or into a store and targeted adds will appear on your devices…salespeople will know your name and habits. Some people will think this is cool and convenient…personally I’m creeped out already
Screw Google. They run a great search business, but that’s the extent of my use of their services. I happily pay for my email service. It’s private and secure. No one is reading my emails to gather data to use for marketing.
Who’s the service? Would happy to know companies that offer email that’s secure and spam-free.
I understand that you’re attempting to curtail your usage of Google services, but you should know that:
— When you perform a search using Google, the text string of your query as well as the URLs you subsequently click are recorded. All of them. Every. Single. Time.
— Although you have wisely set up your own domain-based email account, are you aware what happens when you reply to anyone who sends an email message to you from their Gmail account? That’s right, the text in the originating message as well as the text in YOUR message are auto-scanned and analyzed upon passing through the Gmail servers. The results are added to your Google profile that is indexed under your own email address, and then utilized for ad profiling and and any other marketing purposes they see fit to use.
— All of this information is retained forever by Google.
None of this is paranoid conspiracy theory; it’s simply the way Google does business. And the overwhelming majority of people worldwide seem to have gladly accepted it.
“Google Inc. showcased new offerings Thursday designed to embed the Internet giant more deeply into users’ lives.”
Oh boy, the foxes gain more control of the henhouse. If the Anti-Christ were a technology company then Google would surely be him.
There but for the Grace of Apple…
Offer something for free. People will flock to you, like children to an ice cream truck. Over time, you become part of their lives. A few see past your beatific smile, realize you’ve been rifling their desks, inspecting their cupboards. But most will remain oblivious to the sordid truth: that you are using them.
Oh this IP, posts are removed, no sense of humor, how about this book? “You Can’t Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom (English and English Edition)”
Available at Amazon.
TANSTAAFL!—Robert A. Heinlein. “There ain’t no such think as a free lunch!” (although Heinlein didn’t coin the phrase, he did popularize it.)
This past week I’ve been helping out one of the developers of cookie control software. It is my pleasure to assist in the subversion of marketing surveillance. The point of marketing is to assist the customer, to consider them a collaborator in the business system. Using and abusing the user is never the point of any good business.