[jdormit]

> The only reason they haven't faced the same shitstorm is because they don't seem to share all that data with 3rd parties.

This is the whole point though, is it not? As far as we know, Google treats the data they collect more thoughtfully and responsibly than Facebook. And so they are (rightly or not) viewed as less of a threat to the public good.

Of course, they could just be better at hiding their abuse of our data... But that's a conspiracy theory, not a matter of public record like the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

[elorant]

No, it's not. They share the data indirectly by allowing companies to target individuals for advertising purposes based on that data. You search for shoes on Google and then ads about shoes follow you all over the web. So while you can't download users' posts like CA did in order to profile them for their political affiliation you can surely target them for whatever product you want to sell. If it was just about ads on Google everything would be hunky dory. But it's not. Just because they're nice and cool doesn't mean we have to give them a free pass to our personal lives.

[underwater]

Is that really any better? Google is so monolithic and all encompassing that data collected by their services can be shipped around internally instead of having to be sold to third parties.

[tomnipotent]

> be shipped around internally

How is that a problem? The issue at hand is the irresponsible handling of data (especially wrt 3rd parties), not the general handling of 1st-party data competently within an internal network.

So yes, it's a LOT better.

[underwater]

In what way? If Google uses your search history to target you with ads is that somehow better than them leaking the data and a third party service targetting you the same way? The end result is the same.

[mda]

How are they same? Single source you trust versus multiple unknown parties having your data.

[JohnFen]

> Single source you trust

Assuming that the single source is trustworthy, sure. But we're talking about the likes of Facebook and Google here.

The two use cases for data aren't identical, and actually shipping the raw data out is worse. But, in my opinion, the two things are similar and the shipping out of data is not that much worse.

[underwater]

Take trust out of the equation. It's one entity that is optimised to extract money from you and your data, vs many companies doing the same.