I trust Google, but not the US government (or the UK govt for that matter) to not order them to turn over data, or take it anyway, and because of this I have moved most of my data, everything important, to my own server outside the US.
As far as Google themselves go, I realise they are driven by profit and use my data "against" me in advertising, but in return for that, I get reliable services that add a lot of value to things like email (i.e. Google Now). As far as I'm concerned, this is a totally fair trade-off, and one I'm happy to make.
It was not 100% impossible for Google to not turn over the data, there would have been ways. It's not about if Google is evil or not it's about how evil it is.
It wasn't impossible to not cooperate, but from what I've heard they (and Apple and Microsoft) really tried hard not to comply, and pretty much ran out of things to try. Unfortunately as it was all secret, they didn't have public support, and the amount they could fight it in court was limited.
I find "trust" a bizarre word to use in the context of corporations. I have faith that Google are rational enough to not dance with death (e.g. having a trove of dirty secrets that could be leaked) but I would never say I trust Google. Game theory is much more interesting than the silly notion of "trust".
I posted recently about how they lost my trust after snaring schools with offers of free email and Chromebooks, used that captive audience of kids to secretively build profiles to show ads, denied it when caught, but chickened out about lying in federal court and now they declare they've stopped doing it. Add to that statements that it couldn't be turned off and silently switching language about tracking on their web pages. If this isn't evil then I don't know what is.
I guess that would be your version of events if you only got your news from Microsoft PR.
GApps for education had an option in its admin console to enable ad targeting, it was off by default, the main reason it was there is that it and gmail shared much of the same infrastructure.
As for the lawsuit which despite your claims and those of your linked source (which is parroting the PR folks at safegov in their interpretation) didn't uncover anything other that what Google already stated, but sadly the efforts of these vested interests to confuse you and other uninformed persons by misusing the word "scanning" bared some fruit.
But even if we avoid extremists, it's easier to call people evil when they spy on their pupils using the webcams on the school provided laptops. And then, after people have complained, they do it again. http://www.wired.com/2011/06/webcam-scandal-resurfaces/
So when Google said their policy was 'Dont be evil.', they meant they would do their utmost to refrain from blowing up elementary schools?
According to Brin and Page:
"Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served-as shareholders and in all other ways-by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company."
Missing option: I trust Google, but I still want to reduce my exposure
Google is awesome in lots of ways. At least for their core services like Search and Gmail, they are the epitome of reliability and trust. I check whether the internet works by loading Google. I trust they have good internal controls and won't just read my email.
However, just because they are competent and trustworthy doesn't stop governments from stealing data off of their servers, or compelling them to with a secret letter.
I don't want to use "another service". For example, switching from Gmail to Yahoo Mail because you don't trust Google is tomfoolery. Using PGP is cool. Google is not the problem--the lack of end-to-end encryption is the problem.
People already understand that we can't trust routers and access points with our plaintext--that's one reason we use HTTPS. I think we should start thinking of servers the same way--as untrusted messengers--regardless of how much you trust the company that's running them.
What do you mean by trust?
Trust that they don't link it to you personally to create a bio of you?
Trust that they don't forward the information to the NSA willingly?
Trust that they don't sell it to 3rd parties?
Trust that they have the security in place to prevent breaches?
Trust that they would respect my personal data like it's their own?
I never particularly trusted Google. Reader and Calendar are the only non-searchy products I've ever wanted to use. I had Reader backed up at pinboard.in, which was good because the Takeout for Reader was borked. At this point, 7+ years of my family's Calendar is the only thing I'd miss if Google disappeared, and the only product they make that I find useful. Thanks for reminding me to revisit my backup solution for it.
As for search, I stopped searching the web regularly in about 2008, directly searching Wikipedia, Youtube, Google images, Wolfram alpha, and Amazon directly from the URL bar with bookmark keywords.
I trust them (as much as I can trust any online service) with some of my data, but I have never trusted any of them with my crucial data. I host my own emails, I host (for most parts) my own git repositories, and I have made a conscious decision to stay as far away from social networking sites as possible.
As for the few concessions, I have simply made sure that I keep only a minimum amount of data outside my own control.
If I could boot up a VPS instance with DO or Linode, set up a bit of DNS and then do apt-get install two-factor-open-gmail then I'd be one serious happy camper.
Posted 1 hour ago, with 38 up votes, and it's on the bottom of HN's second page? This was on the front page minutes ago. HN's ranking algorithms seem to get abused whenever a submission is even remotely critical of Google, I assume because of people "reporting" the thread. What's happening?
I trust Google to honor their terms of service which is all we can really ask for I think.
Outside of that, I trust them as much as any other large company with a profit motive. Which is to say about as much as I trust my dog watching the Thanksgiving turkey while it cools.
>I trust Google to honor their terms of service which is all we can really ask for I think.
I trust Google to honor their terms of service (which are not the same as what I first agreed to) for as long as it doesn't benefit them more to break them and take the consequences.
Not the OP, but I've moved a lot of my file hosting from both Google and Dropbox services to a self-hosted install of OwnCloud. Unfortunately, one of my preferred ways of using Dropbox for sharing single files directly without an HTML interstitial page is not well supported by OwnCloud.
I, too, have stopped using Google+, and did not replace it with anything. I have gotten rid of my accounts on all social networking platforms.
I wish that Google would respect all my different accounts and account names. Sure, have some page where they're all linked and shown in some tree and allow me to set privacy settings, but stop logging me in and out of different accounts.
I am a lot more worried about companies having access to my data. I trust Google more than I trust Facebook or a bunch of other companies. I would prefer to be a bit more anonymous though.
Honestly Google hasn't really become toxic yet. If something changes where I know for a fact that Google having my information is detrimental in some valid way, then maybe my opinion will change.
The main thing is that I decided to use Google. I don't even pay Google for the service. If they want to use some information to run ads that might hopefully be relevant, then good for them. I never click ads and I usually use ad blockers anyway.
I still use google, but I try to avoid it when there is a better alternative. Nowadays the search engine is almost the only thing I use. I also have a gmail account that has devolved into a spam sink used to register in websites I intend to use only once or twice. And once in a blue moon I use google maps.
They may have metadata about myself (which is still a lot!); but data, like photos or personal conversations, not any more.
So to everyone saying there is no good alternative - out of curiosity, what are other services missing?
Things like Gmail and Google Voice weren't a particularly big deal to me. Fastmail is more then reasonable of a replacement for mail, and in place of Voice, well, unlimited long distance isn't all that hard to get. In lieu of call distribution, I'll just forward them manually if I need to be reached somewhere else.
I thought Startpage was effectively anonymized Google?
I will say they kinda suck for searches with boolean operators, though. What with all the DMCA takedowns Google gets, that might be a moot point for some things anyway.
Enough to browse YouTube, and I still have a Gmail address from years back, which I no longer actively use. Then Maps, occasionally.
Those are pretty much the only Google services I use. I try to abstain from using their search engine directly as much as possible, instead preferring Startpage.
It's not that I trust paypal, AWS or mega or dropbox or hotmail/skype or facebook or OpenDNS, but diversification is important. Do not become dependant on a single services provider, be redundant, always have a fallback service ready to deploy.
I'm skeptical that anyone ever really trusted free services. Such a thing would be far different than simply using free services, and providing personal data as it is necessary or convenient in order to make use of compelling features.
Not at all. Most of their products are awful, but search and email were the most hard to leave behind. Having used DuckDuckGo and my own mail server for almost three years now, I'm quite comfortable and see them as superior, not inferior.
I don't want to trust Google with possession of my photos, but with Glass, there is no choice; it automatically backs up every picture and video to Google+, and you can't stop it from doing so, even with root.
The one thing that I've been unable to find an alternative to is Youtube, weirdly enough. Largely because of the network effect (most of the people I wish to follow that post videos do so on Youtube).
I trust Google, but not the US government (or the UK govt for that matter) to not order them to turn over data, or take it anyway, and because of this I have moved most of my data, everything important, to my own server outside the US.
As far as Google themselves go, I realise they are driven by profit and use my data "against" me in advertising, but in return for that, I get reliable services that add a lot of value to things like email (i.e. Google Now). As far as I'm concerned, this is a totally fair trade-off, and one I'm happy to make.