> I guess for me, I don't care enough to make all those changes.
Up until I read this article, I used to feel the opposite way. I think there is some value in everyone having privacy and personal space. It gives us an opportunity to decompress and relieve some of the stresses of our increasingly connected world.
However, discovering that Google (and others) are merging my online and offline behavior is making me doubt my viewpoint (the 70% figure really hit hard). If I can't escape it, why not just be apart of it? Surely life is a bit simpler: not having to pay for email, better search results (DDG vs Google)... It seems that whether you want to or not, you _will_ become part of the google/facebook/etc ecosystem.
The other reason I used non-google services was in some ways to "hedge" my position. By using a non-google email with a custom domain, I am not tied down to any email provider (note: I bought the domain explicitly for email use). If I ever became unsatisfied with my email service, I could always switch to a different provider without the hassle of creating a new email address. Now, maybe this is just a defeatist view, but I think google/facebook are too big to fail. If google disappeared tomorrow or in 10 years, there would be chaos -too much of the world depends on it. Does this give them enough power to exist in perpetuity? Maybe it's time to just cave in and use all google services. It sure is cheaper.
> "I think there is some value in everyone having privacy and personal space."
I never got how Google having my data as part of a larger picture ever affected either of those in my daily life. They use it for power in mass, not over individuals. It's an important political conversation, but it's doing everything but affecting me specifically/individually in my daily life (in negative ways at least)
Edit: Just wanted to say I appreciated the comment. As far as too big to fail goes, I don't think Facebook is yet - they are fighting hard to become that right now though. You can easily function without Facebook - right now it's basically only serving as an address book and messaging service for me, and I have good alternatives for both of those. Google's integration into everything is what makes them too big to fail. I've given up on fighting Google, but I'm still careful to some extent with Facebook.
They can track your purchases, but if you stop using Google credentials, they're going to have a lot harder time tying it to your ad views.
It's impossible to avoid having at least some data in various services, but if you divide and conquer, keep accounts separate as much as possible, don't have accounts with companies that collect data about you in other ways (or use fake names and email aliases), you can break up their picture of you.
While articles will point out how small groups of anonymous information can positively identify someone, these programs are likely to be more fragile on a large scale basis. Don't make it easy, and more than likely, at least some of the tracking and the benefit they get from it will fail.
Up until I read this article, I used to feel the opposite way. I think there is some value in everyone having privacy and personal space. It gives us an opportunity to decompress and relieve some of the stresses of our increasingly connected world.
However, discovering that Google (and others) are merging my online and offline behavior is making me doubt my viewpoint (the 70% figure really hit hard). If I can't escape it, why not just be apart of it? Surely life is a bit simpler: not having to pay for email, better search results (DDG vs Google)... It seems that whether you want to or not, you _will_ become part of the google/facebook/etc ecosystem.
The other reason I used non-google services was in some ways to "hedge" my position. By using a non-google email with a custom domain, I am not tied down to any email provider (note: I bought the domain explicitly for email use). If I ever became unsatisfied with my email service, I could always switch to a different provider without the hassle of creating a new email address. Now, maybe this is just a defeatist view, but I think google/facebook are too big to fail. If google disappeared tomorrow or in 10 years, there would be chaos -too much of the world depends on it. Does this give them enough power to exist in perpetuity? Maybe it's time to just cave in and use all google services. It sure is cheaper.