Eamon Burke
Banned
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2011
- Messages
- 4,931
- Reaction score
- 13
It's not that I think you shouldn't be allowed to dislike it. I don't care to judge WHAT others believe, only to analyze HOW they believe it. Carry the same concerns to your life elsewhere. If you will go out of your way to avoid this, does that mean you pay everything in cash, don't have cable TV(or broadcast TV, since the digital switch), avoid stores with security cameras and all toll roads, don't have customer accounts or electronic records anywhere?
Google doesn't tell people "Fred likes Hungarian Salumi and collects tropical fish, and lives in a white house on main street in Fredricksburg, TX. He would do anything to protect his dog, Chuck." It just says that he is one of a bajillion people who have shared interests in Salumi and tropical fish, lives in 78624, and talks alot about the words "Dog" and "Chuck". That kind of data is great for businesses--I've used it, my wife has used it. I if I had to make a living in total ignorance of who my customers are, what they do, what they like, and what they might do in the future, I'd rather be a mountain man. I personally want businesses to know what I want to buy, so they will sell it. Then I can buy it. It's the only voting I actually have a chance to participate in.
It just seems to me that folks expect Google to live up to a standard that does not exist anywhere else. What you do on someone's website isn't private, you are using a computer in someone else's building. They are allowing you to share a real, physical thing they own. You are reading this because many of us paid actual currency to pay for the site to live on a computer in a room somewhere. It has a plug that goes into a wall, it collects dust, it gets hot, it requires maintenance--it is a real thing someone else owns that we are using together. To expect anonymity as a right, or even an option, is hard for me to understand. :scratchhead:
Google doesn't tell people "Fred likes Hungarian Salumi and collects tropical fish, and lives in a white house on main street in Fredricksburg, TX. He would do anything to protect his dog, Chuck." It just says that he is one of a bajillion people who have shared interests in Salumi and tropical fish, lives in 78624, and talks alot about the words "Dog" and "Chuck". That kind of data is great for businesses--I've used it, my wife has used it. I if I had to make a living in total ignorance of who my customers are, what they do, what they like, and what they might do in the future, I'd rather be a mountain man. I personally want businesses to know what I want to buy, so they will sell it. Then I can buy it. It's the only voting I actually have a chance to participate in.
It just seems to me that folks expect Google to live up to a standard that does not exist anywhere else. What you do on someone's website isn't private, you are using a computer in someone else's building. They are allowing you to share a real, physical thing they own. You are reading this because many of us paid actual currency to pay for the site to live on a computer in a room somewhere. It has a plug that goes into a wall, it collects dust, it gets hot, it requires maintenance--it is a real thing someone else owns that we are using together. To expect anonymity as a right, or even an option, is hard for me to understand. :scratchhead:
