More details on privacy

Under heavy construction!

Dump Google

I try not to jump on the Google-hate bandwagon; it can be fashionable these days. However, there have been some reasons for concern in the latter half of its existence, compared to its first half.

And this really applies to any free service, not just Google. The problem is, any service has to generate income. A good rule of thumb is, “If you aren’t paying for the product, then you ARE the product.” This typically means that in order for a free service provider to make money, they gather data about the users and generate revenue from that data by targeting ads, selling it to third parties, and various otherw ways.

Simply put: Google reads (in an automated way) your Gmail email, they note your searches on google.com, youtube, and your phone, they keep track of where you have navigated to/from using Google Maps, etc. This is all so they can build a more accurate picture of who you are, generally so that advertisers can do a better job of predicting your (spending) behavior. This in isolation isn’t too scary to me personally, but for previously mentioned reasons I don’t like that this technology is in place, indepedently of how it may be used today.

But de-googling is not easy. More to come here.