Amazon has a bit more leverage against game publishers than Google, I'd imagine. I don't think they're likely to use it in this manner, but it's there.
This assumes that it's game publishers where there's a copyright problem, which given the recent Twitch muting of copyrighted audio, is probably not the issue that most people are concerned about right now.
This is because Google has started optimizing for the 99% use case, which most HN'ers usually don't fall under. They originally optimized for what most Googlers like (who are generally the 1%) and have since learned that you can't run a business just pleasing the elite and whiny ones.
Surely it can't be the case that Google was serving the 1% till recently. Their products - Gmail, YouTube, Android, Search, Maps etc. - are all leaders in their categories. So the 1%-to-99% argument doesn't quite hold.
I personally think Google held itself back from OTT monetization strategies all these years as it waited for (a) its individual products to become undisputed market leaders, and (b) a unified privacy/social glue across all its products.
Now that the majority of users are locked in to Google - to specific products and across their entire suite of products - they are lifting their self-imposed restraints on privacy/aesthetics/advertising.
That's the wrong way to look at it. They served the whole 100%, and now they are starting to optimize for the 99% at the expense of the 1% of power users. (My guess would be more like 95% / 5%, but I may have a biased view myself)
That's the only explanation to the whole set of stupid decisions they've been taking lately (reader, yt UI, gmail compose, ...): they make more cash by doing so.
Personally, I have noticed a multi-year trend towards serving that 95% at the expense of the 5%.
I'm usually flamed or attacked for suggesting it in most forums, so it's very nice to see people experiencing the same thing with Google
Hangouts is the perfect example. Instead of an easily sortable, easily curatable list of contacts with an easy way to see if they're available or not... now the whole product is shiny, with flashy animations, very little user control of any part of the software, and a whole bunch of Google's "we know best" design ideas like a "special mix" of "recent*" contacts that you cannot alter in any way without actually removing a contact from Google entirely.
> They originally optimized for what most Googlers like (who are generally the 1%) and have since learned that you can't run a business just pleasing the elite and whiny ones.
Well you can - you just can't offer the service for free.
Quarter after quarter Google needs to monetize more. In their earnings announcements, they love to mention it's only a fraction of what Google can achieve. But their heavy monetization of web assets makes me think, they are at the beginning of the second half of their post IPO life. Of course the Glass, the Car, the Hardware may change everything. That final argument is valid for any company, even for startups and even more for YC startups.
Some of their algorithms, yes. But that doesn't mean that users who fall into the "elite and whiny" bunch get the privilege of using the service ad-free and in a format that doesn't work as well for their business.
I'm not in any way affiliated with Google but a Google employee has strongly and empathetically suggested to me that the ad people (and algorithms) have absolutely no access to user account data.
That is the reason why AdWords location targeting is kinda broken currently (at least on non-mobile devices it relies on IP geolocation). If one day AdWords start serving geographically correct ads for everyone, that's the day when the ad people got access to account data.
Google AD CLICKS increased by 22% and PPC went down 4%-8% so Googe made it up on volume. If showing more ads and/or making ads better than organic search is "optimizing for the 99% use case" then you aright.
But as shown on a few comments below Google in many cases shows only ads on the first browser screen. Terrible for users and terrible for Google long term. They should enjoy the steroid boost while it lasts.
It's amazing that on a place like HN it seems like most people just don't get this.
The vast majority of communication happens on products that:
1. Don't even have a desktop component
2. Have no "status" indication (oh noes!!!)
3. Are completely closed ecosystems
And yet you never see posts about how WhatsApp, iMessage, SnapChat, etc are horrible because of the above reasons.
World is a big place and in some areas (like mine) all the services you mentioned aren't popular at all. I doubt 1% of communication happens through them.
People around use gtalk and facebook messanger. They used to use GG (Polish product, some time ago most popular here) and Skype but most of them switched to either gtalk or fb.
Maybe you don't see complaining because services you mentioned didn't come about as replacement for traditional chat clients integrating most important features of those only to get rid of all this in one go once the user base switched.
It's the difference between must have features like the ability to communicate with people you want to talk to and features like desktop/status/etc that are nice to have but not essential. The tech community demands perfection and obsesses over anything/everything while normal people just use what works.
We need a country breakdown considering this launch included China (unlike previous launches). That said, I'm assuming 30-40% in China and the rest elsewhere still puts it as a great launch.
Including China sales the increase was 29% (7m -> 9m).
33% China would be 50% increase in China (2m -> 3m) and up 20% (5m-6m) elsewhere.
40% China would be a near doubling in China (2->3.6), and up 8% (5m->5.4m) elsewhere
For reference, the smartphone market is growing at about 50% a year, in Q2 Apple's sales numbers rose 20% year-on-year and their share dropped over 3 percentage points year-on-year (16.6% -> 13.1%).
(These launch numbers assume that no-one bought a price-dropped 4S on the launch weekend last year)
Get over it people, Google+ is the new account system for all Google products. If you don't like Google having a single account/profile system, or the fact that Google+ profiles include a "social" network product, then you best look for alternatives ASAP.
But even when the good outweighs the bad, its totally fine to stay using a service without some obligation to pretend like the negatives don't exist or never talk about them.
Does ever single person have to blog about their decision though? Every other day there is some random post that someone doesn't want to use Google services for whatever reason. I don't care. Apparently HN does because a majority of them end up making the front page.
> Get over it people, Google+ is the new account system for all Google products.
Maybe Google should finally get over the fact that they've lost this fight and that noone wants to be in a social network whose member numbers are inflated by such desperate moves (which most of us have experienced now and are well aware of).
If you follow Google's strategy, you'll see that they really are not interested in the "stream-view war" with Facebook that everyone seems so intent on their playing. Instead, Google+ is a social backbone that connects all Google products (present and future) and gives you a single Google identity across the internet.
I try to. The single thing I struggle with? Android.
Maybe Firefox OS will be interesting, iOS isn't. And .. right now I can pay for Android apps, but I'm banned from rate them, comment on them. Ignoring all the 'Do you want to be tracked to provide Better Services (tm)" stuff in that ecosystem.
Somewhat ironically, I had a Google account already (albeit only lightly used, losing Reader killed ~95% of the utility for me), but when I got my Android phone, it simply refused to link to it. I think perhaps because I didn't have GMail? To be honest the error messages were never that clear to me. So instead of linking in my "real" Google account, I had to create a new one. One I never browse with, one that has no services, one not linked to the greater anything. Instead of a lightly-but-really-used account now they just have an Android account floating in space, being virtually useless to them.
That anonymous account knows where you live, who you talk to, where you go, what you read online, ...
Linking it to your legal identity isn't hard. Data show that just two ZIP Codes (in the US) can indentify an individual with 95% accuracy: your home and workplace.
Makes me want to rightgrade to an uncontracted dumbphone and a custom-ROMed tablet. Not linked to any Google accounts.
Yeah, but that's mostly useful to law enforcement, if they were interested, and for that the mere fact of a cell phone is enough to get everything you mentioned. What Google gets of value out of this account is greatly reduced, especially as I've been buying the ad-free version of the apps. (While in theory Google could get everything you say, I believe that in practice they actually do not, say, forward all of your "Reddit is Fun" actions up to the Great Google Motherserver.)
And no, I did not say eliminated. Just greatly reduced. (Again, the moreso after shuttering Reader, although I must say that while you could learn a lot about me from my blog reading list, its utility for selling me stuff was pretty low.)
Yeah, but that's mostly useful to law enforcement, if they were interested
De-anonymization has been studied and applied by various parties, and I'm personally aware of at least one non-LEO application. I don't know that Google does or doesn't do this, though it wouldn't surprise me at all if marketing/advertising and/or other "personalization" services did. It would annoy me intensely to find that they were.
For that the mere fact of a cell phone is enough to get everything you mentioned.
A dumb phone can only report coarse location information, SMS messaging, and calls data. Frequently expiring SIMs would limit the useful duration of much of that information, though you'd need something like a self-hosted Google Voice forwarding service to be able to use the phone usefully while maintaining reasonable anonymity. It's not currently practical for most purposes.
Relying on a Free Software VOIP service based on the tablet preferentially for voice calls would further reduce exposure.
If your phone is supported, you could install CyanogenMod (it works fine without gapps installed). From there you can use f-droid for apps, but possibly Amazon App Store could be a good alternative to the Google Play morass.
>possibly Amazon App Store could be a good alternative to the Google Play morass.
Sorry but the last time I tried, Amazon App store was a resource hog. Also apps will stop working if you get signed out of the Amazon app store app. It is like they are trying to prevent one guy who they think will buy a copy of their app, get on a stranger's device, log in to the app store, download their apps, and log out and repeat it for all devices in the world.
Unless it's changed in the last couple of weeks, it's still the case that you have to remain logged in to Amazon's app store. They don't use the native account manager either, which is irritating, and the store app sometimes loses your login credentials.
It gets confusing very fast. I have a personal account, and a Google Apps account. I did work with a company that gave me a google apps account for their domain. And my youtube business page has a Google+ profile.
It is very, very difficult to figure out how to not create duplicate Google+ profiles. There's no clear way to tell Google "This is a different email address that I, a person, use. You should link it to my personal profile".
Which is a UX problem, not a "Google attempting to drive me into yet another unwanted "social" network". You don't think it's in Google's best interest that channels create Google+ Pages rather than individual Google+ profiles?
But they want each one to be tied to a single physical person. They actively dislike alts, which makes having a home profile and a work profile and $counterculture_of_choice profile or two awkward and annoying.
I have gotten over it, and I have already switched to alternatives, but maybe your message would go over a little better if it included some trace of sympathy.
What other altenratives are there that host video in HTML5 webm? Vimeo dropped the whole effort. This is really sick that Google forces thins G+ junk on Youtube users.
You know that DuckDuckGo is a US company, right? And thus subject to the same exact laws as a company like Google (and the same NSA snooping). It's true that they don't log your search queries, but if the NSA has access to the root CAs they can snoop on you anyway. And what do you think happens if the government subpoenas DuckDuckGo and tells them to log your traffic? They will of course do so. And they have a MUCH smaller legal budget with which to fight such government requests than, say, Google.
DuckDuckGo is a cool company, and I think they have a neat product. But if you're worried about the NSA, then you're kidding yourself if you think DDG is safer than any other search engine. Just use Tor and be done with it.
Yes you are right. But my switch was based more on a general "getting tired of google's bullshit" feeling that has been building over the last 2-3 years, especially my experience with google support, adwords, youtube integration, and all the crap that they know about me. At one time I was doing almost 90% of my work in google ecosystem.
Now its spread between yahoo, ddg, dropbox, etc. I feel even more strongly about Facebook. If and when a viable alternative is available, I'll be switching. Similarly with email. For the first time I'm starting to become open to paid email that is secure. I guess it has to be a non-US company.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, will change until developers stop chasing a big payday, and follow their principles instead. Unfortunately, principles don't feed your family or put a roof over their head.
It's always easy to spout how we need to push forward open standards, but what we've seen instead is developers falling over themselves to develop for Apple and Facebook. The very people who are needed to push forward the open web are the very same people who spend their time and energy expanding the every growing empire of closed ecosystems.
Great news for both Google Maps and Waze. From my understanding, Waze negotiated a 3 year period where they would be allowed to continue independently, but I imagine there will be quite a bit of data sharing between the two (Waze can now use Google's maps and POI data, and Google can use Waze's data to improve its realtime directions)
I'll bet you that Waze won't exist as a separate app/product in 3 years. I hope it does, but I doubt that Google are going to maintain two separate navigation apps.
Bravo Edward, and yet very little is said about PRISM at all. When will we finally get to the bottom of what PRISM actually is? When will the public get access to the entire set of slides? How much exactly did Edward know about PRISM, or did he just stumble onto these slides and assume the worst?
So many questions, so few answers. Hopefully the coming weeks sheds more light onto this.
> When will we finally get to the bottom of what PRISM actually is?
Is there any particular reason why you don't believe the fact sheet from the Director of National Intelligence[1] or Marc Ambinder[2]?
According to these sources (selected excerpts):
> PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program.
> PRISM is a kick-ass GUI that allows an analyst to look at, collate, monitor, and cross-check different data types provided to the NSA from internet companies located inside the United States.
> All such information is obtained with FISA Court approval and with the knowledge of the provider based upon a written directive from the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence.
I don't believe the DNI because of his testimony to Congress in February claiming that the National Security Agency does not “wittingly” collect data on millions of Americans. We now know they've been collecting data for tens of millions of Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint/Nextel customers since 2006.
More recently he also claimed that PRISM wasn't a previous-disclosed data collection program. It hadn't been previously disclosed before; and it is collecting data.
So, let me turn this around. Is there any particular reason why you do believe him?
Marc Ambinder's article, by contrast, is quite believable. But going beyond the quote you pulled, he also has lists quite a few open questions about PRISM collecting data on US persons. So it seems to me that we're still a long way from the bottom.
> More recently he also claimed that PRISM wasn't a previous-disclosed data collection program. It hadn't been previously disclosed before; and it is collecting data.
The grammar here is slightly confusing. Do you believe PRISM is collecting data in a previously undisclosed way? If so, why?
For now (until it's replaced by hits from blogs), you can Google for "Planning Tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management", and you'll get plenty of hits describing intelligence job positions and PDFs with descriptions like "PRISM: A web-based application that provides users, at the theater level and below, with the ability to conduct Integrated Collection Management (ICM). Integrates all intelligence discipline assets with all theater requirements."
...and the FISA Court makes the blanket orders allowing the security organizations to have billions of collections in the U.S, see the output of the program made by NSA:
Are you sure you're not conflating various types of SIGINTs here? We're discussing PRISM specifically. The article you linked does not even mention PRISM.
Neither I nor you can be 100% sure what's going on (unless you are one of the guys "inside," heh) but I think it's good that now people start to care if the executive organizations are giving themselves unchecked powers.
Let's see if "it's legal" as said by those you quote simply means "we don't need to ask anybody for permission" and "every three months we get from our court the permission to do anything." The fact is that they use such arguments, let's see the extent of it. The recent news seem to suggest that it's bigger that it was known up to now.
As far as I can see, this debacle is entirely the fault of one journalist at The Washington Post, and the people who believed his interpretation of some aspects of some PowerPoint slides. A lot of hot air was also generated by people who had forgotten about interception facilities like Room 641A, and thought it was news.
It's not the phrase "direct access" (which they could reasonably use given it was used in the original leak story), but rather the construction of the whole sentence.
There are millions of ways you could phrase the response
(Dropbox and Microsoft used completely different language), the chance that these five came up with the phrasing used independently seems fairly low. Especially as the statements weren't all given to a single reporter (who could have phrased the question in a particular way) but rather to a variety of different news sources.
It could still be completely innocent, they could all have cribbed off whoever did the first denial or they could have discussed it beforehand and co-ordinated messages without there having been any government involvement.
I accused you of doing X on mondays. You could say "You know, in fact, I do X, but on tuesdays". Most hypocrites however will take your question as literally as possible and will just say: "No, I don't do X on mondays".
You see, people don't want to know if government has direct access(ok, they want, but it is not their primary concern), they want to know what happened.
It simply doesn't matter if google uploads data to government servers or government gets data from google servers by "directly accessing" them. I would even guess that the latter is simpler to implement and maintain.
I don't mean that google is happy to hand user data to government - they probably aren't - I want to know how many data governments gets.
"You see, people don't want to know if government has direct access(ok, they want, but it is not their primary concern), they want to know what happened.
"
The companies are saying they have no idea. They literally said "we've never heard of this program".
What more do you want?
The claim the newspapers made, in line 1, was, "the government has direct access". The denial made was "the government does not have direct access".
If they want to publish a different claim, i'm sure a different denial will be written.
If you want to know what happened, why are you asking GOogle?
Go ask the NSA
No it isn't. You can run it through plagiarism software which is specifically designed to take into account scenarios like your suggest and it'll be flagged.
For example why do they all use the word "provide" there are hundreds of synonyms that work just as well ("given", "enabled", "allowed", "have", etc.). They weren't accused of "providing" the access, it's a word they've chosen to use.
The specific accusation was about the NSA, why are the denials using "government agencies" or synonyms rather than NSA. There might be perfectly valid reasons, but the chance that they'd all make the same decision to use it independently ?
Why are they all in current tense rather than "we have never x" ?
If there were on or two similarities it might be coincidence, but we're talking about dozens of grammatically and phrasing choices.
Because it is plagiarism. Do you honestly believe the PR people who wrote this didn't also read what others wrote? I don't think they released their statements all the same second.
Here's an example of how a government agency could get indirect access to phone data...
Amdocs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdocs) provides billing services and customer support for most of the major phone companies so it has access to all of the transactional data on your billing statement. If a government agency had access to the Amdocs data, it would have access to the phone data through an indirect channel.
> they could have discussed it beforehand and co-ordinated messages without there having been any government involvement
These are after all companies several (all?) of whom have co-ordinated illegal no-hire compacts in the past: it's not far-fetched to think they'd work together on a PR response to this. Which isn't necessarily to rule out a more sinister explanation of course.
I think lawdawg is saying there's no reasonable way they can deny participating in a massive spying program without somebody saying it sounds dodgy.
And it is kind of true: "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers" is the clearest construction I can imagine for denying involvement, but they get called out for it anyway.
Commits massive domestic spying operation, people complain.
"Can't win with you guys."
I mean, not much more you can do than just laugh at shit like this. Yeah man, everyone here is so unreasonable with their standard of "I don't like when companies blatantly lie" how hypocritical of them?
