One point I'd like to see discussed is written by Bruce Schneier, it made me look at the subject a bit differently than before:
If the National Security Agency required us to notify it whenever we made a new friend, the nation would rebel. Yet we notify Facebook. If the Federal Bureau of Investigation demanded copies of all our conversations and correspondence, it would be laughed at. Yet we provide copies of our e-mail to Google, Microsoft or whoever our mail host is; we provide copies of our text messages to Verizon, AT&T and Sprint; and we provide copies of other conversations to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or whatever other site is hosting them.
The primary business model of the Internet is built on mass surveillance
You get utility in exchange for giving them utility^2.
Is it worth giving someone $100 if they turn around and turn it into $10,000 when you get nothing in return? (Note: we're not designed to think on such expansive macro-connected scales, so nobody (except weirdos) cares to stop enabling such broken behaviors.)
I'll avoid making a comment of how NSA talk is hijacking every thread, but I'll attempt to correct your misgivings:
Google's primary business is advertising, meaning that like the publishers of yore they sell "space", now with the advent of technology that "space" gets populated with what the algos determine to be the best suitable ad according to data about the would be viewer of said ad. They don't 'sell their users to advertisers', they offer them a dashboard with which they supply the content of the advertisement, choose the interests they want to target, and measure the effectiveness of it all. Advertisers do not get exposed to user data - they deal with abstractions.
The point is, Google isn't just "selling space." They collect the data about you, admitting themselves that they prefer to never delete anything. The key word is "targeting," remember? In process, they still know more about you than your mother or partner. Somewhere in their guts, there is a collection of data about you, the depth of it not even imaginable before.
That is a pretty big downgrade in rhetoric on your side: first you were claiming that their business is "surveillance", and that they "sell their users to advertisers" and now that you know better you try to shift the argument to data collection?!
The bottom line is that more data makes better apps, and yes, better ads.
I doubt they know you better than "your mother or partner" because I don't know how to measure that (it's an anecdotal, and a fear mongering thing to say).
They collect whatever you allow them to, and they provide ample means of transparency and control. Not to mention the usefulness of their services.
You're completly misinterpreting what I write. I still agree with Schneier that the main mode of their current business is surveillance.
And we slowly got accustomed to it, noticing less and less. The process of it is described by Moxie in the video I've linked to. Do try to watch and think about it.
Btw, it seems this article was flagged to death. Google seems to be sacred here.
As jmduke said, i feel it's pretty silly to compare Facebook to the NSA, when they operate in completely different contexts: the NSA doesn't ask for your permission for the data, while you and your friends are giving Facebook the data. People are angry because the NSA is collecting data on us without consent.
while i see the argument for "facebook is using the data in a way that we haven't given our consent for," i think it's a lot less severe issue because
a) Facebook openly admits how it's using it, which makes the company honest (unlike the NSA)
b) Ensures us that no human other than the ones you authorize will ever see said data. (unlike the NSA)
we can be angry because the NSA abused our trust, while Facebook has yet to break it. it's also very tiring to hear people and see them live defensively and not use facebook or google in case they might break your trust, its starting to border paranoia.
Facebook doesn't ask for your permission... Didn't you see the article on their "shadow profiles" a couple days ago?
They also aren't honest with how they use that data either, and they definitely don't "ensure us that no human other than the ones you authorized will ever see said data", there have been several huge incidents about that, including one involving Zuckerberg's sister. They continually break our trust, it's not paranoia, look this stuff up, or pay attention to terminology news..,
If the National Security Agency required us to notify it whenever we made a new friend, the nation would rebel. Yet we notify Facebook. If the Federal Bureau of Investigation demanded copies of all our conversations and correspondence, it would be laughed at. Yet we provide copies of our e-mail to Google, Microsoft or whoever our mail host is; we provide copies of our text messages to Verizon, AT&T and Sprint; and we provide copies of other conversations to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or whatever other site is hosting them.
The primary business model of the Internet is built on mass surveillance
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/08/the_publicpriv...
Google's primary business is surveillance of their users. Selling the results to their customers, advertisers.