Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Should We Have the Option of Treating Google Like a Utility?
eegad writes "I've been thinking a lot about how much information I give to technology companies like Google and Facebook and how I'm not super comfortable with what I even dimly know about how they're handling and selling it. Is it time for major companies like this, who offer arguably utility-like services for free in exchange for info, to start giving customers a choice about how to 'pay' for their service? I'd much rather pony up a monthly fee to access all the Google services I use, for example, and be assured that no tracking or selling of my information is going on. I'm not aware of how much money these companies might make from selling data about a particular individual, but could it possibly be more than the $20 or $30 a month I'd fork over to know that my privacy is a little more secure? Is this a pipe dream, or are there other people who would happily pay for their private use of these services? What kinds of costs or problems could be involved with companies implementing this type of dual business model?"
When I had a satellite TV package, the contract forced me to connect the sat box to the phone line. The wording was quite exact, so I wasn't adding the required DSL filter to prevent my DSL from disconnecting and to allow them to transfer information. As I was requesting them to come over and fix my DSL and my satellite (it was putting itself in a degraded no HD channels mode everytime it failed to transfer the info) and I was explicitly refusing to add a DSL filter to the line since it wasn't in the contract, they finally disabled the auto-degrading-if-no-contact and I removed that wire.
But, yeah, at least some companies were really banking on this.