So not a single dime will be actually paid or lost. Just a made up number that they'll get to deduct from what little (if any) taxes they pay.
The settlement valued at $5 billion, has been calculated by determining the value of the extensive data Google collected and stored, the data it will have to destroy, and the data it will no longer be able to collect.
So not a single dime will be actually paid or lost. Just a made up number that they'll get to deduct from what little (if any) taxes they pay.
Will they, though? You're not allowed to take a deduction unrealized revenue, and I don't think that this would fall under a capital expense or asset deprecation. They also paid $12B in income...
Will they, though? You're not allowed to take a deduction unrealized revenue, and I don't think that this would fall under a capital expense or asset deprecation. They also paid $12B in income taxes last year. You can certainly argue that it's too low / not enough, but they do pay taxes.
Eh. I'm extremely skeptical that the value from that data hasn't already been essentially extracted. I highly doubt they're going to be forced to destroy the models and things they've built on...
Eh. I'm extremely skeptical that the value from that data hasn't already been essentially extracted. I highly doubt they're going to be forced to destroy the models and things they've built on this data, and the "holes" it leaves don't really change the fact that you already know what it was.
On the other hand, the value of historical data can decay pretty rapidly as it becomes increasingly out of date. For example, knowing someone's location a year ago tends to be less useful than...
On the other hand, the value of historical data can decay pretty rapidly as it becomes increasingly out of date.
For example, knowing someone's location a year ago tends to be less useful than knowing where they are now. It might be the same thing (if it's their home address) or entirely different if they were traveling at the time.
It depends on how fast it changes. How often do you move?
So, it might be true that the value from the data has mostly been extracted already, but because it's out of date and no longer has much commercial value at all?
Yeah, but not $5 billion. The price in the headline seems like a theoretical notion - no similar transactions, Google doesn't sell marketing data, but someone had to make an estimate. Plaintiffs'...
Yeah, but not $5 billion.
The price in the headline seems like a theoretical notion - no similar transactions, Google doesn't sell marketing data, but someone had to make an estimate. Plaintiffs' lawyers like big numbers since it shows they're doing something.
With the caveat that it’s been a long time since I worked there, I disagree. It’s a very large company with mostly honest employees. I don’t think it’s that easy to tell most of the staff that...
With the caveat that it’s been a long time since I worked there, I disagree. It’s a very large company with mostly honest employees. I don’t think it’s that easy to tell most of the staff that yeah, they comply with the law, going through the motions of deleting it (like, writing code to do it) while still keeping it and using it. And never leaking.
It would be sort of like keeping two sets of books. Dishonesty takes effort.
And what’s the motive? Incognito mode web traffic is not that important. Google is not desperate for money, either. Far from it.
I really want to believe that, but considering how many times the company has lied before... All my trust towards Google is gone, probably never to return.
I really want to believe that, but considering how many times the company has lied before... All my trust towards Google is gone, probably never to return.
You can't trust that many people not to screw up sometimes, but there will likely be an internal postmortem about lessons learned and how to redesign things so that particular screwup never...
You can't trust that many people not to screw up sometimes, but there will likely be an internal postmortem about lessons learned and how to redesign things so that particular screwup never happens again. That's better than many organizations do.
Meanwhile, whenever they publish a blog post about anything really interesting, it's in corpspeak that's nearly impossible to understand, so I don't blame anyone for not reading them. It's hard to build any trust with a company that can't even write comprehensively.
I think boycotts are not worth it since they have useful services, but recommend using systems from multiple organizations and avoiding depending too much on any one. (I have more critical dependencies on Google than I'd prefer due to history and sloth.)
I have mostly de-googled my life. I just don't want to use their services since they're not trustworthy. I am not saying people should do what I do, but I have very hard stances on these things.
I have mostly de-googled my life. I just don't want to use their services since they're not trustworthy.
I am not saying people should do what I do, but I have very hard stances on these things.
I don’t see any specific reason, but I still think it’s a good idea to have one, just on general principle. Rules become less relevant because the world changes. We don’t know the future, but...
I don’t see any specific reason, but I still think it’s a good idea to have one, just on general principle. Rules become less relevant because the world changes. We don’t know the future, but fixed rules that can’t be renegotiated can become dead weight.
Yes, that's true. But the defaults matter, because they change the basis of negotiation. When a rule isn't term-limited, the side that wants to keep the rules as-is can just not answer the phone....
Yes, that's true. But the defaults matter, because they change the basis of negotiation. When a rule isn't term-limited, the side that wants to keep the rules as-is can just not answer the phone.
Consider the difference between a lease that lasts a year and being able to extend that lease forever. If you can do that, for many practical purposes, you own the place. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a very different proposition.
Maybe the same thing would happen again. Maybe Incognito mode won't exist anymore? Maybe browser cookies are no longer a thing? Maybe AI has changed everything, somehow? All sorts of...
Maybe the same thing would happen again. Maybe Incognito mode won't exist anymore? Maybe browser cookies are no longer a thing? Maybe AI has changed everything, somehow? All sorts of possibilities.
Another default choice is "keep the system running as it was." I suspect that not doing anything special about data collected in Incognito mode is an accident. The whole idea is that it's not supposed to be all that easy to detect, so anyone building a system to record web traffic will also record it for a browser in Incognito mode. It's an easy mistake to make.
But once the code is written to detect it, perhaps nobody will want to mess with it? Even if the lawyers say they could.
Just want to highlight the normalization of equating information about people to a monetary value that this headline contains. There's seeds to a dystopian novel backstory in this headline, like...
Just want to highlight the normalization of equating information about people to a monetary value that this headline contains.
There's seeds to a dystopian novel backstory in this headline, like it would be hidden in a montage paragraph of headlines showing how society slid into some indifferent future.
Stop me if I'm completely in the wrong here, but I always thought this entire debate was very stupid. Oh my, Incognito mode doesn't do anything to limit trackers? I don't become Agent 47 the...
Stop me if I'm completely in the wrong here, but I always thought this entire debate was very stupid. Oh my, Incognito mode doesn't do anything to limit trackers? I don't become Agent 47 the second I hit that button? No, of course not. Incognito mode is just a fancy name for "don't record browsing history". How anyone could have interpreted this differently is beyond me, and speaks volumes on the subject of tech literacy. I'm not defending google here, they can go bankrupt and die for all I care, but the fact that a judge looked at this and didn't immediately dismiss the lawsuit is incredibly strange to me.
I was confused too, but like, as Tildes is dominated by mostly tech professionals, and I am not, I just assumed I was misinterpreting something. Doesn't it tell you when you open it "Hey this does...
I was confused too, but like, as Tildes is dominated by mostly tech professionals, and I am not, I just assumed I was misinterpreting something.
Doesn't it tell you when you open it "Hey this does nothing to prevent tracking by websites, it just stops what you're doing from being saved locally"?
I think they introduced that type of language after a few years of general users misunderstanding what it actually does. I believe in the blog post where they reintroduced the feature, Google said...
I think they introduced that type of language after a few years of general users misunderstanding what it actually does.
I believe in the blog post where they reintroduced the feature, Google said something like “if you’re shopping for a gift for your wife and don’t want her to know about it”, which I thought was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the more common use for porn. In retrospect, if you were actually shopping for your wife, your household IP would likely get targeted for ads related to your product search so she would get exposed to your gift search regardless.
So not a single dime will be actually paid or lost. Just a made up number that they'll get to deduct from what little (if any) taxes they pay.
Will they, though? You're not allowed to take a deduction unrealized revenue, and I don't think that this would fall under a capital expense or asset deprecation. They also paid $12B in income taxes last year. You can certainly argue that it's too low / not enough, but they do pay taxes.
Was gonna say that cant be a thing
But they won't keep incognito data anymore, and will destroy what they had. This is a win, even if it didn't come with an additional fine.
Eh. I'm extremely skeptical that the value from that data hasn't already been essentially extracted. I highly doubt they're going to be forced to destroy the models and things they've built on this data, and the "holes" it leaves don't really change the fact that you already know what it was.
On the other hand, the value of historical data can decay pretty rapidly as it becomes increasingly out of date.
For example, knowing someone's location a year ago tends to be less useful than knowing where they are now. It might be the same thing (if it's their home address) or entirely different if they were traveling at the time.
It depends on how fast it changes. How often do you move?
So, it might be true that the value from the data has mostly been extracted already, but because it's out of date and no longer has much commercial value at all?
I would expect that if you sold that data on the open market it would go for millions, easily, even "out of date".
Yeah, but not $5 billion.
The price in the headline seems like a theoretical notion - no similar transactions, Google doesn't sell marketing data, but someone had to make an estimate. Plaintiffs' lawyers like big numbers since it shows they're doing something.
I very much doubt they will destroy it. It's cheaper to lie.
With the caveat that it’s been a long time since I worked there, I disagree. It’s a very large company with mostly honest employees. I don’t think it’s that easy to tell most of the staff that yeah, they comply with the law, going through the motions of deleting it (like, writing code to do it) while still keeping it and using it. And never leaking.
It would be sort of like keeping two sets of books. Dishonesty takes effort.
And what’s the motive? Incognito mode web traffic is not that important. Google is not desperate for money, either. Far from it.
I really want to believe that, but considering how many times the company has lied before... All my trust towards Google is gone, probably never to return.
Don't trust Google. Trust the impossible logistics of keeping a secret around that many people.
You can't trust that many people not to screw up sometimes, but there will likely be an internal postmortem about lessons learned and how to redesign things so that particular screwup never happens again. That's better than many organizations do.
Meanwhile, whenever they publish a blog post about anything really interesting, it's in corpspeak that's nearly impossible to understand, so I don't blame anyone for not reading them. It's hard to build any trust with a company that can't even write comprehensively.
I think boycotts are not worth it since they have useful services, but recommend using systems from multiple organizations and avoiding depending too much on any one. (I have more critical dependencies on Google than I'd prefer due to history and sloth.)
I have mostly de-googled my life. I just don't want to use their services since they're not trustworthy.
I am not saying people should do what I do, but I have very hard stances on these things.
Why put a limit?
I don’t see any specific reason, but I still think it’s a good idea to have one, just on general principle. Rules become less relevant because the world changes. We don’t know the future, but fixed rules that can’t be renegotiated can become dead weight.
" Can't be renegotiated" is very different from "term limited" There's nothing in an indefinite term that restricts renegotiation.
Yes, that's true. But the defaults matter, because they change the basis of negotiation. When a rule isn't term-limited, the side that wants to keep the rules as-is can just not answer the phone.
Consider the difference between a lease that lasts a year and being able to extend that lease forever. If you can do that, for many practical purposes, you own the place. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a very different proposition.
Absolutely. And a default that means that Google can go back to doing the same thing in 5 years is a bad default.
Maybe the same thing would happen again. Maybe Incognito mode won't exist anymore? Maybe browser cookies are no longer a thing? Maybe AI has changed everything, somehow? All sorts of possibilities.
Another default choice is "keep the system running as it was." I suspect that not doing anything special about data collected in Incognito mode is an accident. The whole idea is that it's not supposed to be all that easy to detect, so anyone building a system to record web traffic will also record it for a browser in Incognito mode. It's an easy mistake to make.
But once the code is written to detect it, perhaps nobody will want to mess with it? Even if the lawyers say they could.
Just want to highlight the normalization of equating information about people to a monetary value that this headline contains.
There's seeds to a dystopian novel backstory in this headline, like it would be hidden in a montage paragraph of headlines showing how society slid into some indifferent future.
Stop me if I'm completely in the wrong here, but I always thought this entire debate was very stupid. Oh my, Incognito mode doesn't do anything to limit trackers? I don't become Agent 47 the second I hit that button? No, of course not. Incognito mode is just a fancy name for "don't record browsing history". How anyone could have interpreted this differently is beyond me, and speaks volumes on the subject of tech literacy. I'm not defending google here, they can go bankrupt and die for all I care, but the fact that a judge looked at this and didn't immediately dismiss the lawsuit is incredibly strange to me.
I was confused too, but like, as Tildes is dominated by mostly tech professionals, and I am not, I just assumed I was misinterpreting something.
Doesn't it tell you when you open it "Hey this does nothing to prevent tracking by websites, it just stops what you're doing from being saved locally"?
I think they introduced that type of language after a few years of general users misunderstanding what it actually does.
I believe in the blog post where they reintroduced the feature, Google said something like “if you’re shopping for a gift for your wife and don’t want her to know about it”, which I thought was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the more common use for porn. In retrospect, if you were actually shopping for your wife, your household IP would likely get targeted for ads related to your product search so she would get exposed to your gift search regardless.