Starting off with an admission that I'm a Google fanboy and employee...
I hate this sentiment. It's silly. Google does not sell any information to anyone. Google just shows people targeted ads.
If you can show a way to infer personal details from the mere fact that someone is shown a particular ad (or particular huge set of ads), then publish your results so Google can figure out how to not leak that information.
There is only a subtle distinction between selling an information service like targeting and selling the underlying information.
Consider, a mobile phone network that sold drone strikes on its users using the privileged information they have on their location. The precise flow of money and information is not that important to the consequence for the end user.
Google targeting is "using information about me to benefit another company for financial gain of Google". It is not silly to call this selling...
Firstly, comparing ad views to drone strikes is absurd in any context, and the only purpose can be some terrible appeal to emotion. Even if we were to go with this analogy, the person purchasing the drone strike still doesn't have the privileged information. So, even in this absurd world, no information was sold. The fact that it's terrible for the user (almost as bad as seeing an ad on a site in exchange for that site costing no money!) is irrelevant.
Secondly,
> It is not silly to call this selling...
yes it is! When you sell X to someone, at the end of the transaction, they have X! Otherwise it's not selling!
Selling information, licences and services is different from physical goods but its still called selling. If you deliberately treat this too simplistically then yes, you won't be able empathise with people's discomfort with Google's business model. I'm sure you do actually appreciate how information services have this weird sort of transitivity.
The drone strike is not chosen for emotion but because it shares the targeting concept. If the mobile network didn't know your location, they cannot sell the service. If they do know your location they can. The difference between these two cases is the latter service includes, in some fashion, your location.
Is your location being sold to your enemy? You can argue the terminology but if you look at the consequences, your enemy has attacked you in your secret location because they bought something from the mobile network company.
When information, a license, or a service is sold, the buyer now has information, a license (or general right to do something), or has benefited from some service.
Google sells clicks on ads. Once a click is bought, the buyers now has eyeballs on their websites. Not the information about the person doing the clicking. So, the information about the person doing the clicking is not sold.
I'm going to have a last go because to work at google, I believe you have a moral imperative to understand why the analogy is apt.
Selling consequences of information in some very real sense includes the information. In your terms, the "benefit from some service", is a targeted ad which is a causal consequence of user information. A derived work if you like. Information isn't just one specific pattern of bits.
The drone analogy vividly demonstrates how selling a consequence, killing someone in a secret location, really does include their location as an intrinsic part of the service sold even if no-one actually hands out the lat/long.
If we want to make the analogy apt, it would be like the mobile service saying "To make a phone call, please first call the kill-yourself company and tell them where you are so they can kill you."
Google does not sell the information. It puts up ads that users may (or may not!) click on. The clicking is the point at which the information transfer occurs, and it is voluntary and transparent. Or as transparent as it can be, anyway - if you are unaware of how the internet works when you click on a link, that does not make Google culpable for presenting said link.
The information Google has about the user is never given to anyone, least of all the ad buyers.
You're a smug asshole, aren't you. The reason they are so successful is the technology falls by the wayside; that's how advanced they are. Just because you get off rooting your phone doesn't mean they're not the leaders in technical excellence.
This article doesn't even bring up ABC (alcohol boards) who's sole purpose is to waste taxpayer money on sting operations at bars and push for esoteric laws that make it harder and harder to get a drink.
Make no mistake -- alcohol boards and organizations like MADD are simply neo-prohibiitonist movements co-opted by religious zealots.
I find it hard to argue with any of the points he makes. I'm sure someone here will, but I found myself doing the mental "gulp of air and raising a finger" then getting silenced again.
I really wish Microsoft had pulled off Windows Phone; it arguably had a much better user experience than Android did (and still does) -- and interesting Nokia hardware.
I simply don't believe Google has the best interests of anyone at heart except themselves and advertisers.
The next 10 years are going to be very interesting indeed.
No, it's very much different than Google. Google doesn't have your cash at heart. They've largely been uninterested in your cash. The cash they do care about is that of the advertisers that use their platform. Apple is unapologetically interested in your money and less interested in impinging on people's privacy.
We can argue over which model is preferable to users, with may preferring to pay and others preferring the sponsored option, but you can't really say that Apple and Google are equivalent.
People like to frame the Apple vs Google battle as one of openness vs closed-ness, of an ecosystem with many participants vs a walled garden with just Apple. But I see it far more as a battle over how we choose to pay for technology...directly or indirectly.
I like to think Google gives you a choice of how you're being advertised to, product depending. Lots of times they give you the option to limit the data you send to marketing firms, or outright limit the data they collect (i.e. location history, search history, etc)
>Like Google, they have your cash at heart. Not a thing more.
For one, they could get the same or even more cash with far more crappier products (marketed more, altered to satisfy pundits, relax design and build requirements to cash-in on the Apple brand, etc). Nobody would have taken offense if they built a heavier, bulkier, plastic MacBook Air, with a DVD drive even and VGA ports and visible seams -- but they wanted to do things their was.
Second, wanting my cash is good. Because I get to be the judge when to give my cash, and I give it when I see things I want and like ("shut up and take my money"). Google, on the other hand, wants the advertisers' cash, which means they could not care less about me in lots of areas (except the area of seeing their ads).
So Apple might not have "my interests" at heart, but they are allowed by their management to take more pride in what they build than other companies, where the bottom line dictates more decisions.
Not everyone is as cynical as you. I believe the people at Apple genuinely want to make great hardware and software that enhances people's lives. Their world-class accessibility support is proof enough of that.
>the people at Apple genuinely want ... to enhance people's lives
I believe that too. However, I think that's generally true. You could replace Apple by Google or Microsoft there.
People on a whole are generally good (or at least I believe so).
If what you meant to say was "Apple cares about people and wouldn't let profit motives let them make questionable decisions, like including ads or adding DRM to software " then carry on.
If you indeed said what you meant to in your second sentence, then I think it was essentially meaningless since it's so generally true.
Come on, you don't get to be the highest valued company in the world by being altruistic. Apple produce great products (I happen to be using one now) but they charge prices that many cannot afford in order to make more money for themselves. That's not being cynical, just realistic.
That being said, I think they've learned that getting your cash depends on you being satisfied, and their interests tend to align/dovetail with yours better than MS or Google. With MS/Google, you don't pay them, the advertisers or corporate buyers do and they don't care as much.
To march out some old tropes: Apple makes money by delighting users so they will continue to buy products. Google makes money by tracking users, forcefully if necessary, and abusing their advertisers. Microsoft makes money out of legacy ties these days—they don't deserve to continue existing.
That comment is just ridiculously biased - you might have a good point, but it's hidden behind the opinion. For example, one could just as legitimately counter with "Apple makes money by developing a desirable brand and overcharging on hardware" but that wouldn't fit your spin, would it?
The Apple lock-in only works as long as the users are happy with their (maybe limited) choice. Apple needs their customers to upgrade to new devices every few years.
How is it overcharging? It's true, their devices are more expensive than the rest of the market, but nothing on the market comes close to Apple's quality and usability. Simply said, they have no competition, so they can set their own price - and while the customers are paying it, it's not overcharging.
Everytime I configure a dell to something equivalent to the analogous Apple product, it comes out about even or about 10% more...and in a hideous plastic casing.
Apple makes money by making toys for the wealthy. You have to be middle-class or higher in an advanced economy to use their system, in real terms. In comparison, Google lets anyone use basically all of their stuff for free. As long as you can get online in some form, Google welcomes you, no matter how poor you are or where in the world you might be or what hardware you use. Google also doesn't force you to relinquish control of your environment, whereas Apple has a big ruler it smacks your knuckles with if you don't do things The Apple Way.
Microsoft doesn't deserve to continue existing? Perhaps you should talk to large businesses, then. What are they going to use, because it's only Microsoft that's talking to them. Unix has a love affair with the backend in business, but it's really only Microsoft that's giving them what they want in the full stack. Compare to Apple, who points at the laptops and says "Hey everyone, look how cool we are", at which point business says "oo, cool. So what enterprise tools do you have?"... at which point Apple runs off into traffic, giggling like a mad four-year-old.
>You have to be middle-class or higher in an advanced economy to use their system, in real terms.
True for Apple PCs (except for the Mac Mini, but most people don't buy those.) Especially true for MacBooks.
Not true at all for iPhones which are available on very affordable plans in all developed countries, and are ubiquitous, even for users who are nowhere near middle class.
Microsoft is in transition. The idiocy that was Windows 8 all-but killed the Wintel desktop PC market. The server side is healthy, but desktop Windows is looking very shaky indeed.
For better or worse, Jobs deliberately moved Apple out of Enterprise. We can argue about why, and we can argue whether or not it was a good decision. But Apple decided to focus on consumer computing - which strengthened the consumer brand and freed up development resources, if nothing else.
MS is still trying to slide into all kinds of niches. It's succeeding in a few, but failing and flailing in many.
Nadella will likely be more focused than spaghetti-at-the-wall Ballmer, so we'll have to see how that works out.
Azure isn't solid enough as a cloud service yet - too many outages. Server is looking good. Office is kind of old and boring now, but still does what it does.
So what can MS offer modern startups that they can't get better and/or cheaper elsewhere?
You clearly have no idea how many enterprise web applications and data centers run on .NET. I will agree Microsoft's legacy is allowing them to limp on in the consumer space, but many companies, new and old, are moving to a MS stack for enterprise due to the great developer experience and seamless integration (not unlike Apple on the consumer side).
No, it just means that Android is not a good environment for companies that want to charge money for what they do. Apple is far from the only company that experiences this.
...today. Prior to Nest, there wasn't a "smart" thermostat market. Suddenly, everyone realized that the concept at least is pretty cool and Nest sold like hotcakes.
Prior to this release, Honeywell seemed to be playing Blackberry to Nest's iPhone: "we own the serious market. Only kids and geeks would want a 'smart' ${device}". And then suddenly one day everybody wanted one, and the incumbents were blindsided to realize that they didn't understand their market as well as they'd thought.
There's no reason at all that Honeywell shouldn't dominate the smart thermostat market, other than that they couldn't be bothered to. In a couple of years when no homeowner is going to want to buy a new house with a "dumb" thermostat, they'll need to have something attractive in that space. I bet more is riding on the success of this release than you'd think.
not sure the 'smart' thermostat market will grow huge in a reasonable time frame. 'save' money by buying a 250-400$ (+ installation) thermostat when a normal one costs around 40$. This works for some people/situations, but I'd rather just turn the heat down before I go out the door. On top of it all, your thermostat can now be used against you in a court of law, and who knows what companies will do with this information.
Long-term, I imagine the market will largely be driven by new construction and from installation of new HVAC systems in existing buildings. It's much easier to upsell a $250 thermostat as part of a $BIGNUM package than it is to sell one standalone. Rationally the tradeoff is the same either way, but psychologically it works much better.
