It's not the same thing. First of all lawful companies don't do anything that isn't in the terms of service, that being the legal contract that describes your relationship with the company. Otherwise you can sue them. I'm in the EU and in my country there are state agencies that protect the consumer and handle the suing. Filling a complaint for me is easy and I've had great results in the past.
This is why even an upgrade to GSuite is better, being governed by a different ToC.
Google's standard ToC says that their service:
1. may use tracking pixels, web beacons, browser fingerprinting, and/or device fingerprinting on users
2. may collect your device fingerprint
3. can use your content for all their existing and future services
4. can share your personal information with other parties
5. may stop providing services to you at any time, for any reason
6. keeps the rights on your content when you stop using it
And as we've seen, Google indeed does all of the above.
The second problem is one of lock-in. If you're using an email address that's not on your own domain, you're locked into Gmail and the cost of switching is higher, as can be seen by the people complaining about it. But that's a situation of making your bed and then sleeping in it.
And in the case of Chrome, we are already in a situation in which Google can crush its competition and impose whatever standard they want. It's the new IExplorer and the fact that it has an open source core doesn't matter that much when speaking of Google's lock-in on the market, because the Google-free forks are completely irrelevant.
> First of all lawful companies don't do anything that isn't in the terms of service, that being the legal contract that describes your relationship with the company
I'm gonna stop you right there, because a ToC can only enforce certain provisions and companies can change their ToC anytime they want, as per their ToC. It also does not explicitly prohibit them from doing anything not on the ToC, just as it wouldn't prohibit a user from doing something not covered by the ToC. I guarantee you that Fastmail has this clause.[0]
> second problem is one of lock-in. If you're using an email address that's not on your own domain, you're locked into Gmail
That's irrelevant and a false equivalency. You can use Gmail with your own domain.
> in the case of Chrome, we are already in a situation in which Google can crush its competition and impose whatever standard they want.
Again, completely irrelevant to the question that I asked.
>> "companies can change their ToC anytime they want"
It may be possible in the US, but especially if it's not in the interest of the consumer and if there is a service fee involved, then you need to be notified about such changes in the EU and an online publication won't do. Service providers in my country send me SMS messages and postmail with pickup confirmation required. If they don't have proof that I received that notification, then the new contract does not apply, by law.
Also these contracts can't be applied retroactively. So your point is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
>> "It also does not explicitly prohibit them from doing anything not on the ToC"
Indeed, but the law does. Especially in the EU companies cannot use personally identifiable information without explicit consent. And now with the GDPR, they can't track or profile users without explicit consent either.
We'll see what will happen in the following years, but guess what, Google and Facebook are still doing the same shit, without asking for consent, because they consider that a sign-up is enough, since you've read and agreed to their terms and conditions ;-)
>> "You can use Gmail with your own domain."
I already said in my previous message, along with other messages here, that "even an upgrade to GSuite is better, being governed by a different ToC" and I don't like repeating myself.
Please make an effort to read, or we're going to simply talk past each other.
>> "Again, completely irrelevant to the question that I asked."
You mean the one where you asked about jumping from a frying pan and into the fire? I assumed it wasn't a question related to cooking.
> I'm gonna stop you right there, because a ToC can only enforce certain provisions and companies can change their ToC anytime they want, as per their ToC.
At which point they tell you that they have changed their ToCs
> It also does not explicitly prohibit them from doing anything not on the ToC, just as it wouldn't prohibit a user from doing something not covered by the ToC.
Which is why you check the ToCs to ensure that main classes of poor behaviour that you want to avoid are included in there.
It doesn't scale, at all. Not when I am interacting with upwards of a hundred microservices.
And after a malicious ToC change, the company can immediately act on the policy, meaning if you're even a few minutes late to the party, or if it takes more than a few minutes to completely scrub your data from the website (it does) then your data is now subject to the new ToC.
So the ToC offers no legal protection from data abuse. It's just a nice thought.
Sure, but that's a different discussion altogether. The post I replied to was implying the effort is greater and more complex than most think, and I'm saying it probably isn't – at least not for the common cases. Privacy is a very real concern, but a different conversation.
Since I'm paying them they answer to me. They don't get income from sources other than people paying for email. If they sniff my email they don't have anything to gain from the effort, so they are much less likely to.
This is why even an upgrade to GSuite is better, being governed by a different ToC.
Google's standard ToC says that their service:
1. may use tracking pixels, web beacons, browser fingerprinting, and/or device fingerprinting on users
2. may collect your device fingerprint
3. can use your content for all their existing and future services
4. can share your personal information with other parties
5. may stop providing services to you at any time, for any reason
6. keeps the rights on your content when you stop using it
And as we've seen, Google indeed does all of the above.
The second problem is one of lock-in. If you're using an email address that's not on your own domain, you're locked into Gmail and the cost of switching is higher, as can be seen by the people complaining about it. But that's a situation of making your bed and then sleeping in it.
And in the case of Chrome, we are already in a situation in which Google can crush its competition and impose whatever standard they want. It's the new IExplorer and the fact that it has an open source core doesn't matter that much when speaking of Google's lock-in on the market, because the Google-free forks are completely irrelevant.