I think what would make ethbro more confident, and myself as well, was if there was a way to pay that included a contract ensuring my data could not be used in certain ways without my express permission.
To clarify, I don't worry about the Google of today, I worry about the Google a decade from now, or even worse, the company that buys a chunk of it down the line that feels no such compunctions about using that data however they see fit. A legal contract would go a long ways towards preventing this possibility.
I'm obviously not a lawyer, but to my knowledge, a privacy policy is a contract that ensures that your data cannot be used in certain ways without your express consent. A future google would have the option to update their privacy policy, but they couldn't use your information unless you opted in to the new policy (which companies often do by saying "if you continue to use this, you opt in").
If I'm looking at the right privacy policy (was searching for the general one which would cover Google Analytics un-logged-in tracking), here's a couple of things that struck me as being fairly open ended. Especially for a company as large as Google (and future Google).
"We may combine personal information from one service with information, including personal information, from other Google services – for example to make it easier to share things with people you know. Depending on your account settings, your activity on other sites and apps may be associated with your personal information in order to improve Google’s services and the ads delivered by Google."
"We may share non-personally identifiable information publicly and with our partners – like publishers, advertisers or connected sites. For example, we may share information publicly to show trends about the general use of our services."
I don't want to get into a "Google's creepy" discussion, as I realize that's a personal choice and a lot of people don't have a problem with it these days.
But I do. And I'd be willing to put my money where my mouth is if that were an option.
> but they couldn't use your information unless you opted in to the new policy (which companies often do by saying "if you continue to use this, you opt in").
Yes. I'm working under the assumption (which may or may not be correct) that an official legal contract (and not just a privacy policy which may be enforceable as a contract depending on locale) would both require more formal acceptance (i.e. typing in your name and the date for a digital signature and a note that it's illegal to sign if you are not that person instead of just a click on a button saying "I accept"), and provide a much easier time for any individual wishing to pursue legal action against an entity that violated it (which should keep most of those violations at bay).
In other words, I see privacy policies as new, unstandardized, not taken very seriously by many companies, and possibly useless in some jurisdictions. That may or may not be accurate, as I have no legal experience.
Whether they charge you or not is irrelevant to the point I'm making. Whether they make it part of the standard offerings, or charge for it, some people would like some assurance that they have actual legal control over their data and it's harder to subvert than an accidental click, and they have some recourse should that data be abused.
This is not a problem unique to Google. I'm far more worried about Facebook than Google with regard to this.
There are various ways the existing systems can be gamed to extract information through ancillary channels, particularly WRT AdWords/Doubleclick.
It would be really nice if I could know that Google guaranteed that for example I would never see any ad that was targeted at a cohort smaller than ~100k individuals, especially including geotargeting (eg. no ads targeted at mid-forties male Python developers, with a Github account, who are dual-national American citizens, are native speakers of Hebrew and English, in Albuquerque, with an Android phone, with Linux as their desktop OS, that have recently browsed Quora).
Also disallow targeting employees of specific companies entirely, and a few similar dodges.
This wouldn't eliminate the problem, but it would increase the effort/cost required to bisect cohorts, cross reference with external data sources, and incidentally reveal personal data.
To phrase it another way then, that I can control exactly who is sold my data. Whether directly, or indirectly (via Google proxying ad buys or other aggregate monetization methods).
Point being: my data is worth $X to Google. Based on this, they develop and offer me services, using $X to fund development.
The monetization creeps me out. Mostly through opposing my privacy goals and Google's profit goals. As with another poster, I'm worried about my Google file being in the hands of 20-years-from-now-Google, notsomuch Google of today.
So I'd rather just pay Google directly, call it even, and be certain that my data wasn't in the "pot of gold" pool that everyone's eyeing for whatever new monetization strategy occurs to a Google exec.
And it sucks, because I'd love to use Google Now, Home, etc. I just don't trust them with those data streams.
First, Google Now/Home is pretty shit. At least around here (Hungary).
Second, if you worry about your file getting in the wrong hands (either now or later), then paying them won't help with that. To provide the services they provide they need to have that file.
I think it's more useful in the US, but more importantly, it stands to become much more useful as more AI-personalized services are rolled out. The downside is that Google needs to have the information in my file for it to be useful (or to build a shadow file without my knowledge).
Paying at least makes explicit the bargain we're striking. As opposed to Google offering me something for free, then having every incentive to suck as much money out of what they can glean from me, I'm instead simply paying them for the true cost of the services I consume.
I think Google is very much thinks that if you start paying, you might eventually look for alternatives. And that'd lead to a pricing war. And so on.
And, more importantly, if they roll out a new service and you start using it, you'll immediately start thinking about the cost of using it. Or people will start to "demand" more for their money. (Things like support.)
On the other hand, in their favor, if I was paying for Google then I'd still be using it. And in the absence of new government-mandated information portability laws, they would still be able to have a file on me -- and therefore offer superior services than their information-less competitors.
But I do think you're right about the "branding" issues. They don't want to broach that can of worms because it reminds people that things aren't free and Google is making money to pay engineers and shareholders somehow.
