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Google's Real Name Policy, Why You Are the Product
bs0d3 writes "Google tells their investors: 'Who are our customers? Our customers are over one million advertisers, from small businesses targeting local customers to many of the world's largest global enterprises, who use Google AdWords to reach millions of users around the world.' Site users don't seem to understand. It's not that it's free. It's that you are the product being sold. ThomasMonopoly points out, 'I'm unaware of any company that feels responsible to their product. And if I'm to understand that they're responsible to their customers, the advertisers, I don't want "the world's largest global enterprises" dictating my identity or choosing who in Syria is granted a voice on the world stage.'"
Is this really new to anyone who hasn't lived in the cage for the last 80 years? This business model is a de facto standard since Phil Taylor Farnsworth invented the tele. Nothing to be upset about. You don't have to use Google if you don't want to. Besides, I'd rather be a product of a company that does no evil than a client of some other companies that do.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
It shows that the "omg free stuff" marketing works to people. People also go crazy about coupons and all kinds of "give us permission to spa.. mail you and get these cool things" offers and everything else. Even many slashdotters go to great lengths to defense Google just because their stuff is free (and you don't need to use it if you don't want to!!). At the same time they're ranting how government and companies are violating their privacy, when they're themselves whoring it out.
So don't think it can't happen to you, as it has to me and I was following their rules
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I'm unaware of any company that feels responsible to their product.
That's rather unimaginative. Lots of companies (or rather the people who run them) do show some responsibility toward their product. The first example that comes to mind is animal breeders: the good ones care about the animals they raise and have ethical standards in how they treat them, even when they are going to be sold as food (all the more so when they are going to become pets). Many artists certainly feel responsible toward their product, even when they sell it.
To what extent is this true of Google? Time will tell, but it's unproductive to say that because they are in this to make money it's impossible for them to be responsible. The real question is what combination of public visibility/pressure, economic incentives, and regulation will lead to optimal outcomes.
.sig withheld by request
It's been the staple of "free" commercial TV. You, the viewer, are not the "valued customer". You're the product, to be sold to the ad companies. Why the outcry now?
I don't think it's good or that I feel like it's ok to "sell" me, but, people, if you really just noticed that now, I wonder where you've been the last 50 years.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The smug, sniffy, MS-hating, open source espousing, latte-drinking, Starbucks-frequenting hipsters with fifty-dollar haircuts all fell for the warm gooey spin that using Google products made them better people -- which would have been hilarious just-desserts if it hadn't had the unfortunate side-effect of increasing their market share so much.
I'm just glad people are finally starting to wise up. Hopefully the momentary bubble in marketshare will soon be gone and we can go back to paying Microsoft and using closed source software, where we know we're the customer and not the product.
"You are the product! Ooga-booga-booga!!1"
It's just a sound-byte meant to whip you into an outrage by equivocating advertising with slavery.
Company X provides a product.
You, the customer, pay for it with tiny portions of your time.
Company X then sells those bits of time to other companies.
You are not being sold. You are willingly looking at a few ads in exchange for a product. I know outrage feels good. It's like a drug. But find something real to be outraged over.
Philo T Farnsworth invented US television, which is that commercial stuff in which the viewers are the sweetcorn, the advertisers are the buyers, and the TV company is the farmer. John Logie Baird invented British television in which the taxpayer is the customer, pays directly for the product, and elects politicians to keep an eye on things. That's quite different, as well as being a whole lot better.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Yes, they are. As you said, if they don't like Canada, they can kindly shutter their buildings and leave the fucking country. There are two parts to PIPEDA. The first is that a corporation cannot do ANYTHING with any information collected about a person unless that person has SIGNED a form indicating approval for that EXACT use. The second is that business cannot refuse to do business with somebody who doesn't want to "voluntarily" share personal information. You might be fine with BestBuy and such requiring (oh, sorry, you doublethink'd "require" into "mandatory request") you to turn over your email, phone number, and address in order to buy a cable, but in Canada we put a stop to that retarded practice. Stores have tried to skirt it "We need that information for our service of contacting you for recalls!" "I don't want that service" "It's mandatory!" it didn't go well for them.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Your post is getting pulled back and forth by moderators because it tells a hard truth. Google fans have become as annoying as hardcore Apple fans. They bought into "don't be evil"--a bit of tongue-in-cheek engineering humor--and built up a religion around the company. Because Google competed with Microsoft, that endeared them to techies who saw themselves as too smart to be using Microsoft products. Because Google used Linux, that endeared them to "M$"-hating nerds who saw Google as part of the open source movement. Android because the rallying cry for cross-armed, anti-social cynics standing in the corner of the party watching the iPhone users socialize.
Finally, people have begun to wake up to the fact that Google is not what they perceived it to be. Their refusal to implement Do Not Track in Chrome, which would negatively impact their core business of web ads, is one example. Another is the fact that they claim to be all about openness yet withhold the source to Android from non-privileged partners, as well as ship Flash and AAC/MP3 playback in Chrome. They're even using Android compatibility requirements as a way to obstruct phone vendors that choose not to use Google services. And the Street View scandal is interesting because many don't seem to realize they were "accidentally" collecting that data for four years before finally revealing it under pressure from German investigators (Google fans seem to believe that Google stepped forward and admitted it on their own as a gesture of good will).
However, for so many years, mentioning any of this on tech sites like Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News, and so on would get you voted down relentlessly by obsessive fans who could not accept any criticism of their hero. Google's purpose in appealing to those crowds--and I wouldn't be surprised if Google employees secretly post here and at other sites to help in this--is to win the support of techie communities, who will then defend them and give them a pass for things that companies like Microsoft could never get away with. It's free advertising.
The biggest success story, in my opinion, is convincing techies that they are an open source company and making them forget that their core business is built on a closed source search engine. Google are the gatekeepers of the web, a global megacorp that single-handedly regulates web traffic which makes it enormous profits. It doesn't seem to occur to the open source crowd that the web is tied up behind a closed source product that is as closed and proprietary as Windows. You don't have access to the source; you can't view it and see the algorithms it's using; you can't examine how it's using your personal data. For a crowd that's always so vigilant in attacking other companies for being closed, their acceptance of Google is incredible.