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by brudgers 5252 days ago
If I was running a business which used Google Docs and Gmail as the center piece of corporate workflow, I would be very concerned about the ability of competitors to gather industrial intelligence simply by purchasing advertising.

And that's even without giving Google the leverage to change the Terms of Service by which I access my existing business records unilaterally, at will, and without recourse.

YMMV
2 comments
cbs 5252 days ago
If I was running a business which used Google Docs and Gmail as the center piece of corporate workflow, I would be very concerned about the ability of competitors to gather industrial intelligence simply by purchasing advertising.

On the other hand, if I was a buisness concerned about the ability of competitors to gather industrial intelligence, I wouldn't use 2nd party cloud services.

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MCompeau 5252 days ago
Please correct me if I'm mistaken but companies using Google services such as GMail and Docs use them through Google Apps which isn't subject to advertising like the public versions of these services.
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maaku 5252 days ago
You're missing the point--when the switchover occurs the ads accompanying regular google search will pull upon a profile which includes your GMail/Google Docs accounts as well.
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SoftwareMaven 5252 days ago
Data from Google's enterprise products are not included in your ad profile. I can't imagine they will change that, or they will see a mass exodus from their platform. Just because something shows up in your (March 1st) search results doesn't mean it was used in generating the ad next to it.
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brudgers 5252 days ago
>"I can't imagine they will change that, or they will see a mass exodus from their platform."

I have observed people tend to accept vendor lock in. Particularly when the migration costs are high.

Likewise, the cost of lost enterprise accounts would have to offset the revenue gained from mining the data...assuming of course that Google isn't already mining enterprise data.

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maaku 5252 days ago
From TFA: "if you want to continue using Gmail, Docs, and so on. You must allow Google to share your data between its services"

Maybe it is actually sensationalist nonsense, but that is what the whole article is kinda about.

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