Google’s 4k-Word Privacy Policy Is a History of the Internet

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/07/10/opinion/google-privacy-policy.html

by mitchbob • 7 years ago

321 136 7 years ago

“Google’s Policy Google’s policy on our”

Was that typo in Google’s original 1999 privacy policy or is that just the New York Times sucking at copying and pasting?

foldr• 7 years ago

It's a heading copied without formatting.

MichaelApproved• 7 years ago

To clarify, it currently shows it like this:

Google’s Policy Google’s policy on our wholly controlled and operated Internet sites...

This is what it should look like formatted:

Google’s Policy

Google’s policy on our wholly controlled and operated Internet sites...

groovybits2• 7 years ago

This article is probably intended as a jab at Google for having a Privacy Policy that is absurdly long.

However, this is also proof of how far we've come in regulating how personal information is identified and stored.

For example, the data comparison between 1999 and 2019 - Simply saying "We collect personal information you provide and clickthrough information" is certainly not enough nowadays. A short and generic policy lends itself to legal abuse, whereas the longer and specific policy tells you exactly what to expect from using the service.

Can things be made more clear? Always. But I think this trend is generally for the better.

donmcronald2• 7 years ago

What difference does it even make? If they want to collect new info, they just add it to the all encompassing policy for “everything Google” and the opt out option (lose access?) is too detrimental, so I have to agree.

They might as well just say “we collect everything.”

groovybits2• 7 years ago

If they want to collect new info, they just add it to the all encompassing policy for “everything Google”

Well the policy is not a binary blob. Google does more than most services by providing a full archive of their policies, as well as a clear-cut comparison of each.

https://policies.google.com/privacy/archive

FWIW, their most recent comparison is nearly all clarifications, with only one completely new addition.

Filligree• 7 years ago

That's exactly the sort of thing the GDPR is meant to address, actually. They shouldn't be able to force opt-in of a policy to access a service that doesn't itself need that information.

rando444• 7 years ago

It's not about the collection so much as it is about how they use it.

They're going to be making money off you. It's important that you don't have a means to claim retribution.

danso5• 7 years ago

Also in Google's defense, the services (and ostensible benefits) Google provides in 1999 vs 2019 are so far different in scope that it's not a particularly helpful comparison/contrast. The year of GMail's launch vs 2019 would cut more to the point.

umeshunni• 7 years ago

I'm really curious about the volume of tech-bashing opinion pieces that the NYTimes (and other corporate media outlets) publish on a daily basis. It's starting to rival the volume of Trump-bashing articles they used to publish at the peak of the US election cycle.

Do they have an entire department devoted to churning out this content? Are they hiring freelancers are paying them by the word/click? Do they also pay people to post them and upvote them on reddit/HN etc?

In the last day alone (from a search on HN): https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/opinion/email-tracking.ht...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/07/10/opinion/googl...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/opinion/internet-democrac...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/books/review/the-code-mar...

Most of them are just rehashing the same "big tech bad. media is freedom" spiel.

lonelappde• 7 years ago

NYTimes writes a lot of articles. The anti tech ones are highlighted here because that's what HN likes.

throwaway20482• 7 years ago

HN is far more cynical about tech in general than NYT is.

jrockway• 7 years ago

They publish a lot of articles. I thought they were pretty hard on Hillary during the election too.

kabwj• 7 years ago

Also Facebook.

It’s because media companies used to control all the information and opinion. Now they’re losing that power to big tech. They are mad. But ultimately they will lose, for better or for worse.

pessimizer2• 7 years ago

No, they will operate as they have always operated, and simply be owned by Google or Amazon. They are currently operated by unaccountable billionaire families; in the future they will be operated by unaccountable billionaire families.

donmcronald2• 7 years ago

I hate adhesive ToS / Privacy Policies. I think options for data export should have to be sent to the user alongside privacy policy changes. I also think companies should be required to show TOS / Privacy Policies in a modal dialog that’s displayed for the amount of time a fast reader would take to read them.

If the average person reads 250 words / min with 70-80% comprehension, that’s 16 minutes for a 4k word policy. Since it’s legalese, I bet it’s 30+ minutes for most people. That’s ridiculous.

skybrian• 7 years ago

People are already pretty annoyed by constant cookie notices. Do you think making these notices more annoying will be popular?

Maybe we need to think about alternatives to what is effectively more legal paperwork in daily life?

pmlnr• 7 years ago

The cookie notices are the true face of the modern internet: what should have happened is that there should be no cookies until needed - so not until you log in or do "add to cart" and similar things. No cookies at all. Nothing.

Instead the notices happened.

pmiller22• 7 years ago

I get what you’re saying here, but is there an alternative to “take it or leave it” policies on the internet? It’s not like a company can negotiate with each individual user and come to a meeting of the minds.

That said, it seems like the real issue is that the policies are too long and unreadable. For that, I think providing a plain language version that clearly states “this is not the official policy,” but links to the official policy, could be good enough. I don’t know how much legal exposure is involved for the company here, but it seems like a workable compromise.

Karunamon• 7 years ago

is there an alternative to “take it or leave it” policies on the internet?

Anywhere covered by GDPR, for one. One of the features of that law is that you don't get to make access to your service conditional on providing personal information that is not strictly necessary to make the service work.

ijpoijpoihpiuoh2• 7 years ago

I don't get it. People want comprehensive details about what companies do with their information, but they also want short privacy policies. You can't have both. And if you look at Google's privacy policy, it's not legalese at all. It's mostly explanatory, since its text binds Google, not the user.

The TOU is a different matter, but, again, users and the law have forced companies into the situation where they have to explicitly spell out every detail. Even with that, Google's terms are written in what seems to me to be plain English (https://policies.google.com/terms?gl=us). What would you cut from that to make it more concise? I can see a few things, but I'm also not a lawyer, and I'm not equipped to judge what liabilities each sentence might protect Google from.

Most people never read this stuff because most people just don't care. They'll never have a dispute with Google that would be covered by the terms, and they don't care enough about privacy to find a less convenient but more privacy-sensitive alternative. Even if they do care about privacy, they probably have a pretty good idea of what kinds of information Google collects, so the privacy policy is at most a reference for cases where they are unsure. Attempting to force them to read it would be unproductive, since it contains information that is either irrelevant or else already known to potential users.

Drdrdrq2• 7 years ago

You are missing the point. There should be no need for such policies. Google should not be able / allowed to collect this data, with or without user consent.

Iv2• 7 years ago

People want comprehensive details about what companies do with their information, but they also want short privacy policies. You can't have both.

You can, if the companies would not track users.

"We are not logging your activity, we are not using cookies unless you are using the webshop's cart and we delete it when the transaction is confirmed. We do not share your private information to anyone but the payment company.

We log IPs for 3 months for technical debugging. We do not try to identify the people the IPs belong to unless an illegal intrusion is detected."

jsnell2• 7 years ago

The NYT privacy policy [0] is 5.2K words. It contains basically everything that they're criticizing Google for. And a bit more. Apparently NYT will by default sell (sorry, "rent") your name and postal address to direct mail advertisers.

[If you use technology, someone is using your information. We’ll tell you how — and what you can do about it. Sign up for our limited-run newsletter.]

Uh-huh. If there's even a trace of irony in that writing, I can't spot it.

[0] https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014892108-Priv...

smnrchrds• 7 years ago

There is a separation between NYT the corporation and the editorial staff. Just a couple of weeks ago, there was an article in NYT complaining about CCTVs installed in NYT office [0]. Should we now dismiss every article in NYT complaining about surveillance (especially workplace surveillance) as hypocritical and ironic, because if NYT thinks surveillance is bad, why do they do it themselves?

Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions where workers enjoy a level of freedom from management in doing their work. The other example is tenured professors. We should celebrate this, not mock it.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/opinion/surveillance-came...

icxa2• 7 years ago

We should celebrate this, not mock it.

I don't know what dystopian world you want to live in, but any time I see a company profit off sheer hypocrisy, I am going to call it out and mock it. They can have freedom all they want, but this article is generating clicks and revenues for Parent Corp, so they deserve the scrutiny. This isn't some public service they are providing.

TimTheTinker• 7 years ago

On the other hand, shouldn't management/leadership of journalism firms be held just as accountable for their actions as others?

I think we're too quick to give a pass to business/leadership people for unethical behavior we rationalize to be good for business -- in education, journalism and anywhere else.

Cyph0n2• 7 years ago

Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions where workers enjoy a level of freedom from management in doing their work.

Eh, not really. They recently shuttered their daily political cartoon section, mainly due to a submission they published that was labelled as anti-Semitic.

njharman• 7 years ago

Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions

by institutions I'll assume you mean journalistic ones. Cause employees of non-consumer facing corporations have far more freedom.

The thing is, journalism, good journalism, and certainly public service journalism, no longer requires an institution. Don't believe in the lies that claim otherwise.

tomcam• 7 years ago

They are regarded as among the world’s best reporters. They can Google up their own privacy policy just like anyone else, no disturbance of the editorial/sales wall necessary.

btrettel• 7 years ago

Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions where workers enjoy a level of freedom from management in doing their work. The other example is tenured professors.

PhD student here. I think the impression that tenured professors have freedom from management is an illusion at best. As far as I can tell, getting a PhD, getting hired as a professor, and getting tenure seem to filter out people who would challenge the system. It's easy for a university to say that their tenured faculty are free to do whatever they want if they select and cultivate people who won't take them up on that offer. (Now that I write this, I'm reminded of web hosting companies that offer unlimited storage or bandwidth but get irritated if you actually use a lot of storage or bandwidth.)

Personally, I'm leaning towards the conclusions of the financial independence/early retirement community: real freedom comes when you have "FU money". Money is the unit of freedom in the US.

catacombs2• 7 years ago

Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions where workers enjoy a level of freedom from management in doing their work.

That is not the case. Every every reporter has an editor he or she must report to. Sure, reporters are given some freedom on the stories they pursue, but it's hardly a hands-off approach.

Fnoord• 7 years ago

There is a separation between NYT the corporation and the editorial staff.

Google is also a diverse company, with a lot of employees...

What matters, in the end, is the policies.

rhizome• 7 years ago

That essay is an opinion piece, not an article, and ironically for you the office surveillance was almost certainly installed by NYT corporate (or its designee), so the hypocrisy you raise cannot even exist according to the terms you provide unless you remove the separation between corp and editorial.

haberman2• 7 years ago

Newspapers like NYT are one of the few institutions where workers enjoy a level of freedom from management in doing their work.

Then why do these articles not also criticize the NYT for these practices? Google is an easy target for newspapers because they are competitors for traffic and ads. Show me NYT reporters calling out their own practices and I will believe they enjoy this level of freedom from management.

joelg• 7 years ago

This class of argument is incredibly common (e.g. Pinboard criticizing the NYT piece on ad trackers for having ad trackers itself) and is incredibly counter-productive. It's the equivalent of smarmy relatives commenting "oh yeah? well you're still on it" if you complain about Facebook on Facebook.

Sure, they're trapped inside the system, but they're trying to change it!! And that certainly deserves our respect. At least it deserves better than knee-jerk "gotchas".

SilasX• 7 years ago

I disagree [1]; accusations of hypocrisy are making an important point, which is:

"Hey, there's a reason people do the thing you criticize, as demonstrated by the fact that you do it. So instead of making this about shaming others for moral inadequacy, maybe you should be helping to identify and fix the systemic problem that leads everyone to do it. Since you have firsthand experience with that dynamic, why aren't you sharing your expertise here?"

[1] Previous comment making the point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20166369#20166980

danShumway• 7 years ago

It's not black-and-white.

The hypocrisy of the NYT as an institution does not invalidate their points about Google. However, their points about Google do not make their own practices any better.

It is also true that individual journalists and opinion authors don't get to decide how the NYT operates. However, they do get to choose what they write about -- and by broadly emphasizing Google's policies and by broadly ignoring the policies of institutions like the NYT, journalists risk rephrasing the cultural debate over privacy as "normal people vs big tech" rather than, "normal people vs big tech, the government, publishers, and the entire ad industry".

Journalists do not have a responsibility to force their publishers to change, nor is it a problem for them to write articles that focus on Google. However, journalists do have a responsibility to research and understand the broader topics they are reporting on -- and it is not incorrect for readers to observe that we're seeing a trend of journalists who are remarkably hesitant to apply the same level of reporting scrutiny toward publishers and news organizations that they do towards other institutions.

It's also not black-and-white whether this criticism is counter-productive. To the extent that it shelters companies like Google and plays into "whataboutism" -- yes, it's a problem.

However, criticism of this nature is also the reason why NYT as a publisher has recently started to get more self-aware of their own practices[0]. If journalists see criticism of this nature and it makes them more likely to report on publisher privacy policies, that's productive. If institutions like the NYT get criticized and it leads to them internally examining and changing some of their own privacy policies, that's very productive.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/opinion/sulzberger-new-yo...

Iv2• 7 years ago

I think that this hypocrisy also pinpoints a flaw in the main argument: this piece is a criticism of Google, not a criticism of the business ecosystem of tech companies. It singles out one actor, who is doing tings that are common practices, as a bad actor.

It is not just to say "Haha! you are an hypocrite therefore you are wrong!" That would be ad-hominem. This is to say that what they denounce is not the behavior of a single actor but the norm on the net. Failure to recognize that makes their opinion at least incomplete, probably invalid.

vharuck2• 7 years ago

You can accept a group's idea without absolving the group of all sins. Judge news reports by their accuracy and relevancy.

godelski• 7 years ago

This is an opinion piece.

scott_s• 7 years ago

This is far more of an analysis than a critique, and it's just as much about the evolution of technology and the internet as it is about Google itself.

danso5• 7 years ago

It's fair to make an opening critique of the NYT's privacy policy, based on word count, because that is the main metric the NYT uses for the visualizations in the article. But the article's claims don't rest on that metric, so to assert that the NYT has "basically everything that they're criticizing Google for" requires more evidence and specifics. Especially when we consider that the info Google solicits and stores is by every standard far greater than anything the NYT collects, which means that the potential damage from abuse is also far greater. So it's worth asking why you think Google having fewer words for its privacy policy is, even on a facile level, an argument for its favor and not against it, considering Google has far more kinds of data and ways to share it.

But let's go with your claim, that NYT's policy is "basically everything" that they critique Google for. You mention NYT sharing name and postal address with advertisers and direct mailers – while that's something that has been an industry (in general, not just media) practice well before the computer age, let's agree for the sake of argument that it's still evil, and both the NYT and Google do it.

What other privacy policies/potential abuses do you see them sharing? We might assert that both companies say they collect and store location information, but on closer reading of the NYT's policies, I see some specific and substantial differences:

On ad-targeting:

The ads in our apps are not targeted to you based on your current GPS location, but they are targeted to you based on your ZIP code or device's IP address.

On retention:

If you elect to have a location-based search saved to your history, we will store that information on our servers. If you do not enable the location-based service, or if an app does not have that feature, the app will not transmit to us, and we will not collect or store, location information.

So I didn't scour the policy pages completely -- I tried to find info based on keywords, e.g. Ctrl-Fing for "location", "gps", "ip", so I apologize in advance if I overlooked something. But as far as I can tell, Google does not state a limit to the precision of location info they give to advertisers. And they do not say that users have the option to opt out of location-processing, nor do they state if it's possible for users to deny the transmitting of location info, period, in the way that the NYT says "we will not collect or store location information" if a user disables it. Again, I apologize if I've missed a similar specific statement in Google's policy.

That's a key difference in scope of data collection and retention, one that strongly rebuts your generalization. But more to the point, it's a difference in scope that has extremely obvious differences in actual impact. I think it's safe to assume if the NYT were subpoenaed for a user's IP address (such as someone making illegal threats in the comments section) they would comply with authorities.

But if the NYT were subpoenaed for the timestamped location info of a user accused of crime, and known to use the NYT website/app, the NYT, if it follows its stated policy, simply cannot comply, because it has made a decision to not track or store that info without user approval.

That doesn't seem to be the case with Google. And the consequences to the user are not theoretical – Google has already acknowledged that it complies with sweeping requests made by law enforcement, such as "the coordinates of any phones that were in the area between 7:30 pm and 10:30 pm" on the night of a suspected arson fire [0]. You can argue all you want that Google is just following the law, but the fact remains that they choose to collect and store this info. And that being the case, claiming that the NYT's privacy problems are "basically everything" of Google's, seems so facile as to trivialize the debate.

Disclosure: I just noticed that a former student of mine is listed as a co-author, and I'm assuming she was key in creating the data visualization and analysis.

[0] https://slate.com/technology/2019/02/reverse-location-search...

candybar8• 7 years ago

From New York Times privacy policy:

Some of the services and advertisements included in the NYT Services, including on NYTimes.com and within our mobile apps, are delivered or served by third-party companies, which may collect information about your use of the NYT Services.

These companies place or recognize cookies, pixel tags, web beacons or other technology to track certain information about our NYT Services website users. For example, in the course of serving certain advertisements, an advertiser may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser in order to collect certain information about your use of the NYT Services. For another example, an advertiser or ad server may also be able to collect your device’s unique identifier in the course of serving an ad. In many cases, this information could be used to show you ads on other websites based on your interests.

We do not have access to, nor control over, these third parties' use of cookies or other tracking technologies or how they may be used.

For example, we use Google to serve advertisements on the NYT Services, which use the Google Doubleclick cookie, and in some cases, a unique device identifier, to show you ads based on your visit to NYTimes.com and other sites on the Internet. You may opt out of the use of the Google Doubleclick cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy. If you would like more information about this practice, and to learn how to opt out of it in desktop and mobile browsers on the particular device on which you are accessing this Privacy Policy, please visit http://optout.aboutads.info/#/ and http://optout.networkadvertising.org/#. You may download the AppChoices app at http://www.aboutads.info/appchoices to opt out in mobile apps.

They are embedding third-party tracking technologies inside their app and letting each of them track however they want.

candybar8• 7 years ago

This seems pretty disingenuous given the range of services offered by Google and New York Times - New York Times is a regional publication that doesn't really have any reason to know your location besides ads, while Google offers a free mobile operating system that millions of apps run on top of, many of which (including their own) use the location capabilities of the platform to provide useful services.

jsnell2• 7 years ago

let's agree for the sake of argument that it's still evil, and both the NYT and Google do it.

I don't think I'm willing to agree to that. What bit in the Google Privacy Policy makes you think they do it (it doesn't seem to fit in under any of the four categories of sharing)? And do you have an example of them actually doing it?

Re: location, I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make here. Under section 4 NYT says they collect "IP addresses, geolocation information, unique device identifiers". They "use and disclose this information for any purpose", which seems rather broad and "store it in log files". The retention is specified as "as long as needed or permitted in light of the purpose(s) for which it was obtained and consistent with applicable law".

(NYT then have a section on a specific app whose location information you can turn on/off, just like Google has a section on the Android location and Location History that can be turned on/off.)

Re: what does the article criticize Google for:

- Having a "sprawling 4000 word policy". NYT is the same.

- Treating the users as individuals rather than as aggregates. NYT is the same.

- Sharing data (which the article sneakily puts as the heading of a section that's not actually about sharing data). NYT is slightly worse.

- Personalized ads / ad targeting. Google basically just say they use data to personalize ads shown to you, and link to the controls for it. The NYT policy says they target ads by ZIP code or IP address, but on a re-read I agree that they don't say anything about personalization (I misread the last paragraph of 4.B, it seems to actually be about targeting ads for the NYT, not ads on NYT).

- License for uploaded content. The authors are pulling a fast one here, since that's the TOS rather than the privacy policy. The NYT TOS, of course, has almost exactly the same language.

And that being the case, claiming that the NYT's privacy problems are "basically everything" of Google's, seems so facile as to trivialize the debate

But I didn't claim that. I said that everything the authors criticized Google's policy for was also in the NYT policy. And fair enough, maybe it wasn't everything but more like 4.5/5.

I think there would have been a much better article here somewhere, where they'd e.g. first done a critique on the NYT policy using a similar tone as here. Shredding NYT like that would have certainly gotten the reader's attention. And once you've established a baseline and gotten the reader worked up, show how the Google/Facebook/etc policies are even worse.

amelius• 7 years ago

That's an ad hominem fallacy there. The argument still stands.

dTal• 7 years ago

Specifically, it's a "tu quoque" argument ("you also").

Still, I don't think the purpose was to discredit the argument, as such - just to point out the hypocrisy.

en-us• 7 years ago

This is true of most news sites that report on things like this. I remember an article a few months back about the proliferation of Facebook trackers and how it is a bad thing. The article itself had a Facebook pixel tracker on it. The author could have discovered this doing the same they did for all the sites they reported on. Of course they did not cover their own site.

haberman2• 7 years ago

"The First Law of @nytimes Tech Reporting: Whatever privacy practice they're complaining about, they do themselves."

--https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1146492837447393282

jrochkind1• 7 years ago

I'm not sure that was a particularly _critical_ article, actually. It was pretty much just describing what Google does and how it's changed. I'm not sure there's a lot of value judgement in the writing, a lot of "critisizing Google." It was just reporting something of interest (it was of interest to me, was it to you?)

But, sure, part of the motivation of writing it was presumably knowing that some/many people would find it dismaying or unfavorable to Google.

Presumably the journalists who wrote it don't have a lot of control over the NYTimes privacy polices or practices. I'm glad the NYTimes paid someone to research it, and then published it, because then it got to me and I liked the article.

I don't see any problems or surprises, this is the world.

I guess they could write an article about the history of the NYTimes privacy policy... but really, who cares about reading that so much? Although sure, they could do more to use the nytimes as an example to be more transparent.

That they didn't doesn't erase the value of the article.

(The NYT OP does (now as I read it, it may not when you did) end with an italisized paragraph mentioning that the Times "collects data on visitors" too and linking to their own privacy policy and some other information)

nickv5• 7 years ago

I think one of the frustrating things about this comment and the thread is this article is about Google's privacy policy specifically and how it reflects the change in Internet businesses. It's not a generic privacy policy article.

The Times DID publish a generic privacy policy article a week ago and it did call itself out as one of the worst ones [1].

It wasn't an explicit "at the Times we do this", but there's an infographic/chart in the article that places the NYT in a pretty damning spot[2]. They also called out a rival news organization (the BBC) which does a great job relatively speaking.

I think the Times has a huge point here in general and I find this article's narrative compelling and well done. Instead of making it about "why didn't we make this about themselves" I would rather focus on what it's trying to say. (Also, Google is probably the trailblazer here with this stuff and sets the tone/trend).

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/12/opinion/faceb...

[2] https://imgur.com/Ct3YHiU

masonic2• 7 years ago

  it did call itself out as one of the worst ones

And yet has not changed it in response.

nothis• 7 years ago

Whatboutism. They at least make a critical article about it and they're also a simple newspaper website, not the heart of the internet.

jeromegv• 7 years ago

Indeed, one controls the most expensive property on the internet, their influence is way beyond the NYT.

mattigames• 7 years ago

So you think if NYT were the heart of the internet they will actually do better? Nonsense; the reasons NYT does it at their scale and Google does it at their scale is the same.

product50• 7 years ago

Can we just automatically flag posts which mentioned "whataboutism"? THey are utterly ignorant and add nothing to the conversation - like this one.

dang• 7 years ago

Canned arguments like "whataboutism" break the site guideline against shallow dismissals and also the one about calling names in arguments.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20404173 and marked it off-topic.

IronWolve• 7 years ago

(recap)

1999 - we collect 4 things

2019 - we collect everything about you

vntok3• 7 years ago

This is very disingenuous. How about:

1999 - we do 1 service

2019 - we do 100s of services

Drdrdrq2• 7 years ago

So, under GDPR and as EU citizen, can I get Google to erase all my data if I steer clear of their services? I would really love it if I could, though I'm afraid they would rather pay fines than remove my data.

lrem2• 7 years ago

I don't know the user interface, but some four years ago, when I worked on one of the most important databases in ads, we've had a bunch of business requests preempted by preparing for compliance with the upcoming EU privacy law (we didn't even know its name back then, only that we'll need a way to erase all data about a user on a short notice). I would be rather surprised if all that investment was wasted.

saltminer• 7 years ago

I believe you can do this without being an EU citizen: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7660719?hl=en&dar...

lotu2• 7 years ago

GDPR fines are up to 4% of global revenue. Do you honestly believe that Google is willing to risk literally Billions of dollars to hold on to your data? It just plain is not worth it so few people ever ask for data to be deleted it costs more to implement the data deletion code than is lost via less good ad targeting.

Havoc2• 7 years ago

Does anyone actually read privacy policies?

My default assumption is that they're all out to f me on this front & it's not like you actually have a choice in the modern world. If it's 4k long then I guess they just needed lots of noise to hide the crux of it.

dwyerm• 7 years ago

I do. If nothing else, I look for a binding arbitration opt-out, so I can engage that before whatever time period expires.

Havoc2• 7 years ago

binding arbitration opt-out

Fair point. That does assume same legal jurisdiction though.

Practically I'm not in the same jurisdiction as any of these websites anyway. None of this is legally enforceable unless a party is sufficiently aggrieved to spend a ton on specialist lawyers. Whether or not I clicked on some internet button privacy policy seems a little pointless in that context

Raphmedia• 7 years ago

This reminds me of Pokemon Go forced arbitration opt-out clause that made the news and trended a while back.

"The Go terms do include an opt-out provision for people who don’t want to give up their rights. However, you must opt out within 30 days of first agreeing to the Terms of Service.

Luckily, many Pokémon Go users have only downloaded and activated the app in the last week, meaning they are still within that timeframe.

To Opt Out: Send an email ASAP (before the 30 days have passed) to termsofservice@nianticlabs.com with “Arbitration Opt-out Notice” in the subject line and a clear declaration that you are opting out of the arbitration clause in the Pokémon Go terms of service."

https://consumerist.com/2016/07/14/pokemon-go-strips-users-o...

lrem2• 7 years ago

Google employees do. It's required reading before designing, implementing or operating any system dealing with user data. Intentionally (i.e. genuine bugs excluded) breaking the policy is an outright fireable offence.

Zenst• 7 years ago

I much prefer the retro resolution of 3 words "Do no evil", we're now up to 4k resolution of words, soon we will have 8k resolution of words.

Maybe there is some new moore's law in EULA and Privacy Policies as they keep getting larger and larger, when will we reach peak, as there are published books out there with less words.

flycaliguy• 7 years ago

Any company that has to tell itself not to be evil should be a red flag.

UweSchmidt• 7 years ago

The simple idea of presenting users with a text like this is madness. You know I won't read it, you know most people couldn't process or understand it if they tried, you want consent and agreements through a popup in the browser yet you know damn well that it is not an agreement at all.

To anyone who does this, who presents complicated privacy guidelines, EULAs in all-caps, insane cookie opt-out checkboxes, please have a hard look in the mirror. Think of a real-world analogy for the kind of roadblocks and contraptions you are building, how you are misleading and exposing your fellow humans. Thanks.

jaflo• 7 years ago

Isn't most of this because of legal reasons though? You can't really leave out a lot of the language without being more vulnerable in court.

saxonslav• 7 years ago

There should be a summary of all legal policies tbh

petilon• 7 years ago

On a somewhat related topic: Google changed gmail URL to mail.google.com from gmail.com. I think this is for easier tracking of users--it is easier to set cookies that are shared by all Google apps and sites.

ehsankia• 7 years ago

Yesterday, some editor at Google accidentally used "4,000" instead of 4K in their Prime/Chromecast presser, and now today whoever submitted this replaced 4,000 with 4K. Was that a subtle joke?

Google’s 4k-Word Privacy Policy Is a History of the Internet

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