On Saturday 11 Jul 2015 08:52:53 Neil Bothwick wrote: > On Sat, 11 Jul 2015 08:26:43 +0100, Mick wrote: > > > > You are not googles users ... YOU are the product they sell > > > > > > > > Brilliant ! > > > > We are users of their service(s) and our information is the product > > they sell to marketing businesses and more recently governments. > > We are users of their services and our information is the fee we pay for > those services. It's like any other transaction; if you don't like the > price, don't buy the service.
If Google do not cover their costs, then they will not be able to offer their services. However, if I don't like the price and not use all these companies' services, then to a great extent this implies I choose to not use the Internet. This would not present a problem for my father in law, but would cause a catastrophic collapse of the cognitive map of most children in the western world. > No one is forcing you to give you data to Google, or any of the other > companies. You are right of course. The question however remains if our human right to privacy is violated by these internet service and communications companies and we ended up implicitly acquiescing to it, while our governments changed the laws to regularise it. Not using the Internet will severely restrict our information access and return it to the analogue age. Back to the OP's question, I don't think that Google (or the rest) are trying to *control* the way we live, but can definitely influence it. PS. I marked this as [O/T] because the words gentoo, portage, emerge, et al. did not appear once so far. :-p -- Regards, Mick
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