I recently adopted a new policy about Google, and wanted to share. Not the earth-shattering topic one would expect for my first blog post since late May, but maybe my serious lack of earth-shattering topics is why I haven't done anything here in a while.
Anyway, for years, I have been Mister Privacy when it comes to what I share with Google. Like most people, I had flirted with a couple of the company's offerings; I had a Google+ account along with my Gmail, and had experimented with things like Google Docs and its Calendar. But I sharply limited what I let the company know about me and my Internet habits. I had saving my search results turned off, I used other search engines when I could. and I certainly, certainly didn't let Google track where I was as part of its Google Now program — an initiative that tries to present you with necessary information based on what the company knows about you from it's myriad technological tentacles.
A lot of the reason for this is because I am a die-hard Apple enthusiast, and am frankly distrustful of the company, largely because of the way that Google, in my opinion, blatantly ripped off the design of Apple's iPhone for its Android software. The theft made me mad, and distrustful of the search giant's motives. Any large company, even Apple, shouldn't be trusted too far with ultimate world power, and the theft made me very suspicious indeed of Google's famous "Don't Be Evil" mission statement.
So for years, I kept my Gmail use to an absolute minimum, kept my searches secret from the company, and avoided Google+ like the plague. Not that anyone I cared about ever really used Google+.
Here's the thing, though — Google has some really, really smart people working for them, that make some really cool stuff. And the stuff they offer is not only free (to users like us), it's also pretty useful. None of it was anything I couldn't do better with Apple's ecosystem, but the tech geek in me still thought it was neat.
A couple of things happened this week to make me give Google another look.
The first was this posting from Chris Messina, a former Google+ developer, which I'm linking to here with a profanity warning. In it, he offers the first defense of Google's jealous hoarding of user information that I actually found reasonable. He talks about things like the digital identity in such an urgent, idealist way, I find myself actually wanting one. Mind you, he thinks that Google+ has failed, and that Google is rapidly squandering its chance to keep Facebook from being the only digital identity site out there. But he makes some good arguments as to why letting someone like Google build up a huge amount of user data can, and is, a good thing.
What he doesn't say, to the best of my memory, that this experience comes at the expense of user privacy so they can sell advertising. But I already knew that. What impressed me was his real, genuine wish to give people something genuinely valuable in return. He still passionately believes in the work he did with Google, even though he thinks the Google+ project has lost its way.
If he'd still been an employee when he wrote about how great data collection is, I would have been much more skeptical about his arguments. But the fact that he's not and employee, and that he still seems to have genuine regret that more people don't avail themselves to the benefits of being "data positive," as he puts it, gave me pause. And when he said that we are, to companies like Google don't really care about our data, specifically, I very nearly believed him.
And please, before you pass any judgements on my mangled paraphrasing of his arguments, you owe it to yourself to go and read what he actually said. As a college history teacher of mine managed to convince me, primary sources are nearly always superior to secondary sources.
If he'd still been an employee when he wrote about how great data collection is, I would have been much more skeptical about his arguments. But the fact that he's not and employee, and that he still seems to have genuine regret that more people don't avail themselves to the benefits of being "data positive," as he puts it, gave me pause. And when he said that we are, to companies like Google don't really care about our data, specifically, I very nearly believed him.
And please, before you pass any judgements on my mangled paraphrasing of his arguments, you owe it to yourself to go and read what he actually said. As a college history teacher of mine managed to convince me, primary sources are nearly always superior to secondary sources.
Here's the thing: I know for a fact that there are many apps that have a legitimate need for your personal information. A mapping app that doesn't know where you are is twice as hard to use for directions, for example, and impossible to use safely when you're driving a car. It's possible that good things can come from letting the machines know more about us, as frightening as that is to say out loud.
Mind, I think there's still a huge potential for abuse if you hand over information about yourself to complete strangers. For example, a lot of the apps on my phone have absolutely no reason to be able to track my location. But everything Google wants from me can, with a few clicks, be turned off and erased. I know this because I've done it. Of course, the company's apps were practically screaming at me not too the whole time (and, by practically screaming, I mean there were repeated warnings about the dire consequences of my actions at each and every step. So maybe "screaming" is a little melodramatic). But it can be done — the genie can be put back in the bottle with a minimum of fuss.
Mind, I think there's still a huge potential for abuse if you hand over information about yourself to complete strangers. For example, a lot of the apps on my phone have absolutely no reason to be able to track my location. But everything Google wants from me can, with a few clicks, be turned off and erased. I know this because I've done it. Of course, the company's apps were practically screaming at me not too the whole time (and, by practically screaming, I mean there were repeated warnings about the dire consequences of my actions at each and every step. So maybe "screaming" is a little melodramatic). But it can be done — the genie can be put back in the bottle with a minimum of fuss.
I may be wrong, but I don't think that's the case with something like Facebook. Oh, there are privacy controls there, but they change an awful lot. I can't speak for Android users, but Facebook's iOS apps update like clockwork every two weeks. Given the company's past track record of using privacy updates as a way of switching user privacy settings to "wide open," I'm a little suspicious each and every time they update. And actually deleting a Facebook account is, when I last heard, worthy of one of the Labors of Hercules.
The other part of this is that I get a lot of enjoyment from experimenting with technology. Computers and the Internet have developed to the point where it's a form of electrical necromancy; what companies like Apple, and Google, and yes, even Microsoft, are doing often feels like magic, even though it's not. I take great joy from discovering the little wonders the programmers and developers have built into our laptops, tablets and computers. It was what made me fall in love with Apple's approach. And it's what keeps me excited, year after year, about what's coming next.
So, despite my sincere and somewhat justified misgivings about Google's past, I'm going to let my guard down, open my mind a bit, and go play in someone else's garden for a bit. I really don't expect to come away wanting to switch to Android — as Jason Snell recently observed, I still bleed six colors, and think I always will. But I hope, if nothing else, it will be fun. And just maybe, it'll make it easier to see the other guy's point of view. And, heaven knows, we could all use more of that.
