[ajross]

Exactly. Twenty years ago, the idea that someone from whom you purchased a product might (gasp) know who you are would have been obvious. Even once the web arrived we all dutifully typed our credit card and contact info into every online purchase, and no one cared. Now all of a sudden it's "revealed" that Android app vendors have the same info (broadly -- they don't get credit card numbers) and it's a "privacy" concern?

That said... maybe there's something to this. Apple has shown that a different model can work, that isolates the buyer from the seller. Is that a good or bad thing? I think there's an interesting discussion to be had here, but this "privacy" nonsense has to stop.

[amartya916]

I am surprised to hear you refer to this as "privacy nonsense"; things like a name and address are obviously identity related information. As such, any identity related information has to have privacy concerns.

In some ways, I see this as a breach of trust; I can trust Google with some of my data but I dont think every app developer is worthy of even a certain percentage of that trust.

[ajross]

This doesn't seem responsive to what I said. Every other financial transaction you engage in carries some kind of disclosure of identity. Your credit card has your name on it and discloses it when it's swiped. You can't order anything at all online without giving them a shipping address. You can't even buy a coffee for cash without your picture being taken by security cameras.

Holding this particular kind of transaction up as (no joke: your words) a "breach of trust" is just ridiculous on its face. So much so that frankly I suspect this is just yet another "Apple vs. Google" flame war in clever disguise.

Again, I agree there's an interesting discussion to be had about this stuff. But only if you give up the absurd absolutist flaming.

[amartya916]

Let me assure you that there was no insinuation of any Apple vs Google flame war in my comment. While breach of trust might see over the top to you, the interpretation was supposed to be quite simple, let me explain:

Most financial transactions do involve exchange of identifiable information; that remains true for online as as well as real world transactions; you are absolutely right about that. However, in all those transaction, you 'choose' to share some amount of information. One of the reasons services like Paypal became popular was the implicit lack of trust in an online transaction; people were more willing to trust an intermediary to keep their credit card information secure, than using it with any and all online merchants. Similarly, I trust Google as a company more than most other companies with my data and that's a 'choice' I made; however, them sharing certain parts of my identity with a multitude of app developers does seem to be something I didn't 'choose' to do. That seems to be a decision that Google took on my behalf and therein lies the "breach of trust" that you seem to have taken an exception to.

There is no flaming involved; I just think Google can do better.

[saurik]

So, I largely agree with you; I agree with you sufficiently that the app-ish store that I run, Cydia, works much more similarly to Google Play than to the App Store in this regard (although not all the way down to personal phone numbers and addresses; these are not given to the package vendors).

However, I can appreciate the other side of this argument, and I think you are failing to draw the analogy the way a normal user would: when you purchase something online from Amazon, do you expect the manufacturer to know who you are? I would actually be very surprised if that is true right now.

How about when you purchase something, twenty years ago, in person, from K-Mart; do you expect the people who made the product you are purchasing to know who you are? Sure, it is clear that the K-Mart employee talking to you does, and it is clear that K-Mart's credit card computer does, but the manufacturer?

Further, while many people probably didn't realize this, it is clear that K-Mart's computer could (although it probably didn't twenty years ago; almost certainly did ten years ago) keep track of exactly what was purchased, and by whom using what credit cards, for their own data analysis and optimization.

But, would you ever have expected K-Mart to put together a massive list of all of the information on all of the people who purchased the shampoo you bought, and then send it to the shampoo company? If you did, I'm pretty certain you would be in the minority, even with today's technology.

[Evbn]

Are you familiar with a payment instrument called ... Cash?