[hylianwarrior]

Why on earth would you think Google would sell its most valuable asset? Google does not sell user data, it builds on it. The more data they get, the better and better their AI will develop.

Looking back, when they announced they were going to become an AI-first company these sort of drastic data-grabs and privacy issues should have been apparent. But hindsight is 20/20...

[pluma]

%s/sell/monetise/g

You know what they meant. Google is milking users for all data they can derive from their activity and creating value from that. It's not so much the use of the data that's the problem as the lengths they go to to create that data.

I recall someone from one of the major tech companies talking about how their users "emit data", implying the data just happens and their role is purely passive with the users practically handing them that data. That's a perverse way of looking at it when you contrast it with e.g. the GDPR's premise that data belongs to the user and companies need (withdrawable) consent to collect and process it.

In the US tech companies don't collect user data, users "emit" it -- even if the only reason the data is "emitted" is because the tech is actively spying on its users' every move.

[tracker1]

That in and of itself is the sole reason Google doesn't bug me as much as some other networks (Facebook comes to mind).

They provide a lot of value, but in the end, I think a lot of their products will eventually use market and mindshare.

[johnchristopher]

I believe it's now common to use "sell your data" as a synonym of "make profit off data" or "sell a service that gives anonymized data".

[mikejb]

That may be an explanation, but IMO there's a huge difference between the two, and putting both concepts under the same wording is dangerous. Selling data means surrendering any and every control over it, and if from a user (trust) perspective there's no difference to offering a service based on data, companies will choose the more lucrative one.

[maxxxxx]

I agree that there is a difference. But in both cases we have a company sucking up as much data as it can and even if it doesn't sell the data today they still have it and can decide to sell it tomorrow. Or be forced by governments.

[pluma]

There's a difference. But in practice the difference doesn't matter.

As a user you expect a reasonable level of privacy unless the software explicitly requests your consent for providing certain information or explicitly asks you to provide that information manually. If the software then hands that information off to a third party you expect that only to happen with explicit consent.

The problem in this case is that Google isn't interested in consent. It tries to get as much information as it can without needing to ask for consent and when it does ask for consent it's through coercion by tying that consent request to actions that are not reflective of the scope of the request ("You want to save your home location? Okay but in order to do that we need to be able to track your every move forever").

That's arguably far more malicious than explicitly saying "please let us share this info with company XYZ so we can continue offering this service for free". That most companies selling data to third parties aren't so explicit about it is irrelevant -- this is just about the claim that "selling data" is inherently more malicious than what Google is doing.

That said, no, selling does not mean "surrendering any and every control over it". GDPR and friends specifically address that by stating that the human being the data is about continues to own that data and can withdraw consent at any time (at any depth of sharing).

[mikejb]

There is a difference, and in practice as in theory, it matters a lot. You can delete your data on your Google account - that gets rid of your data. Deleting that data after it was sold to 3rd parties is like trying to delete your drunk party picture from the internet. Sure, you can try to invoke GDPR, but that's going to be hard when the data was sold to some Chinese company that doesn't operate financially in Europe.

[pluma]

You don't seem to comprehend the fact that in the scope of the GDPR they can't sell to "some Chinese company" without your consent.

If you can only explain why selling is worse by creating a scenario where the selling is done without consent or in an equally malicious/shady way, that doesn't demonstrate that selling is inherently worse.

Selling isn't worse. Selling without regard for a user's rights is bad. But Google is already engaging in abusive behavior as far as users' rights are concerned.

Also, I know this is hard to understand if you're not used to real privacy laws, but if a company sells your data and you invoke your rights against the company, it's the company's responsibility to go after whoever they sold the data to, not yours.

[mikejb]

I think this is a critical point of misunderstanding:

> if a company sells your data and you invoke your rights against the company, it's the company's responsibility to go after whoever they sold the data to, not yours.

Can you point me to more details on this? I have my doubts about it.

[TheArcane]

> they were going to become an AI-first company these sort of drastic data-grabs

I'm appalled every time I'm asked to train Google's object detection networks in the guise of solving a captcha.

[mattkevan]

Agreed. I didn't mind ReCaptcha when it was helping digitise books because it felt like there was some kind of social benefit beyond padding Google's bottom line (even if that wasn't actually true).

But now when I'm asked to select all the squares containing road signs or storefronts or whatever it feels like I'm being forced to work for Google for free just so I can go about my day.

[SquareWheel]

>Why on earth would you think Google would sell its most valuable asset?

It's such a simple concept, and yet I see people on Hacker News constantly making this mistake. It's as if people are too addicted to outrage culture to even consider the arguments anymore.

[inetknght]

Perhaps because it's such verifiable information that makes it rather unique in value when you have people who are able to mathematically predict how those verified people might perform based on behavior history. If you then couple it with "spin" you end up encouraging large amounts of income to be created upon it. Much like predicting the future since you effectively are predicting the future.

[kyboren]

"Sell your data" is the widely-accepted common term for the business model of a company that analyzes user data in unfathomable detail in order to charge advertiser Johns more money when that company pimps out their users' minds like sex traffickers pimp out the bodies of prostitutes.

[samstave]

They became the "Alpha Bet" to be AI top dog - betting to be on top....

[maybebad]

Google sells user data. They profit amassing data. AI is a nascent technology that Google will happily lead. But until AI is ready, Google will continue to happily sell data - your data, my data, anyone who touches the internet in fact.

[balladeer]

They don't have to give the raw tracking data to some other entity. They can sell decisions based on my data they collect.

Then can tell you to try to sell cycle headlamp to me because I have been looking for it in last fews days. I'd say that's selling my data.