You really have to stop equivocating on this issue. On one hand you keep saying that you want to manage your privacy, yet you keep pointing out things that you would pay for like the Flight Aware thing. Which according to you is doing the very thing you say you are against, i.e. web wiretapping, third party advertising, electronic espionage, etc.

The web has gone way beyond strip mall to being trapped in an indoor swap market whose only outlet is to buy your way out.

Google is at the top of the list of data miners especially if you use the chrome browser. It creates a unique ID when you install it that is transmitted to google every time you open it up and uses https to track and record every place you go online. This is also used every time that you use any other google services. Using google ‘incognito’ mode does nothing to prevent real time tracking, but tosses a fig leaf in deleting browser history on close. You still give up your privacy during your online session including cookies despite enabling ‘Do Not Track’. I have mentioned that before on the VRM site. DNT relies on setting a cookie that regardless of its content still enables tracking.

Google’s claim to ‘fame’ was creating the Text Ad, which at the time was seen as a relief among users during the great pop up/pop under ad blitz a few years ago. Folks decided that wasn’t evil. Silly Us!

Facebook does the same types of data mining including creating profiles even if you are not a member through the facebook icon and like buttons on websites.

The rest of the ‘Social Networks’ do the same with varying degrees.

The problem with these large data collections is not that they exist but how they are used. On the one hand the social media PR firms are screaming ‘Targeting’ ,reach, engagement, to sell you stuff. And these folks are happy to sell it. On the other hand they can be used for tracking folks for alleged crimes, based on loose laws and criteria set by people with agendas, from copyright nazis to IP loons to governments attempting to stifle speech.

The back end of the web is turning into a nightmare of data mining that on its best day will be sold for a Minority Report style pre-buy and on its worst pre-crime.

We are all guilty of compliance and complicity turning the web into a strip mall in either browsing naked or attempting to ‘route around’ this with ad blockers, cookie crushers, and other methods of attempting of maintaining ‘privacy.

We continue to patronize websites with or without blockers who are addicted to advertiser support for income.

Until we can change the game, we are screwed.

Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites.

Lessig’s Republic Lost. And yes, it does apply to corporate power.

Small example:

http://allthingsd.com/20121024/google-on-track-for-another-record-high-lobbying-expenses/

“Google this week disclosed it spent $4.18 million on U.S. lobbying in the third quarter of 2012, bringing the company to $13.13 million spent this year — a record.

That makes Google the seventh-biggest lobbying spender out there,
right after AT&T and the pharmaceutical industry.”

That’s a lot of A-listers and conference-clubbers.

[Sigh, none of this is intended as personal criticism or simplistic straw-man shill accusations. But Lessig wrote a whole book about money being influence, and that problem isn't just applicable to Congress. It's relevant to corporate power as well.]

As for it being free, it’s because Harvard provides it. No advertising here.

I think the tide of sentiment, even among the tech crowd, is beginning to turn against Google a bit. Not much yet, but it’s definitely starting to happen.

Google has done much good for otherwise independent code developers. They produce and support a great deal of open source development, and have projects such as the Data Liberation Front. I believe these are sincere efforts, especially by the geeks doing the work.

As part of that, Google likes to hire star programmers like Tim Bray, who indeed do find more freedom at Google, personally, than they would at Apple, which notoriously make blogging dangerous for its employees. But even among those there are misgivings, mostly because a great deal of what Google does is highly secretive, and much of what’s a secret has to do with understanding people more than most of us would like. One reason is to improve service. Another is to “improve” advertising by making it ever more close to perfectly personal.

This last urge is the One Ring they hold, like Sméagol, and it is turning them into Gollum.

There are risks for the rest of us, beyond loss of privacy, and the creepiness of being the things sold rather than the ones sold to. I’ve written about this a number of times, to little if any effect. The Google Exposure, in Linux Journal, is one example.

Google is also admired for its 3/4-hearted fight for keeping the Internet open and free, and not captive to phone and cable carriers, which see it instead as a billing system for usage and “content,” rather than the most powerful generator of positive economic externalities ever created. Which it is. But the carriers are wraiths with rings of their own, and Google through Android and the whole mobile phone industry is now in alliance with them.

I could go on, but we’re in the midst of moving furniture and stuff. More later.

“…about an unaccountable corporation to have access to that much information…”

Should have read – “…about an unaccountable corporation having access to that much information…”

But hey, it’s a free service, so who am I to complain?

Doc, one of the challenges is that much of the digital élite still regard Google as a good citizen. Apple gets far more critical review than Google. For Chinese workplace matters; product repairability; environmental content; etc. To say nothing of the “walled garden” criticism that has been levied against Apple ever since the iTunes Music Store came online.

Irony is the fifth fundamental force of the universe.

Apple’s success has been dismissed by the digital élites as mere “marketing” over technological merit.

Ironically, Apple is a successful technology company. They make money selling advanced technology at affordable prices.

Google, the darling of the tech community, is an advertising company that uses technology to advance marketing.

Amazon is a retail company that uses technology to advance its retail operation.

I have little problem with Apple or Amazon. Google, on the other hand, is genuinely problematic. The people most knowledgeable about its potential for creating adverse outcomes appear to be the least likely to call attention to it. I suspect it may have something to do with loss and grieving. Too many people bought into Google’s “don’t be evil,” embrace of so-called “openness,” use of open source software, free services (“information wants to be FREE!”), to recognize how adroitly those values have been used against them. They are stuck in denial, which is where I think Tim Bray is. Some may be in bargaining.

We have a long way to go before we get through anger, depression and acceptance and we can have an honest conversation about how we feel about an unaccountable corporation to have access to that much information about ordinary citizens.

How much information? We don’t know. Because Google isn’t very “open” or “transparent” about that.

Apple sells widgets. Amazon sells stuff. Google sells us.

Why are they so admired?