I don’t like liars.
I really don’t like liars who pretend they’re doing the right thing – when they are doing no such thing.
I REALLY don’t like liars who preen about doing the right thing – when all they’re actually doing is helping themselves do the wrong thing.
Google has become a nearly $1 trillion company – by taking your digital data and selling ads predicated upon it.
Thus, anyone else collecting data – is inherently a Google competitor.
And Google doesn’t like competitors – and will do anything they can to eliminate them.
Google bribes the living daylight out of governments everywhere – to get anti-competitors-policy imposed…while they themselves are left all alone to continue data-grabbing unabated.
To wit:
Broadband Providers Allege Maine Privacy Law Unfairly Targets Them:
“The Act To Protect the Privacy of Online Customer Information, scheduled to go into effect on July 1, prohibits (Internet Service Providers) ISPs from using, disclosing, selling, or permitting access to customer personal information without customer consent.
“The law also prohibits ISPs from refusing to serve customers or charging a penalty to customers who do not consent to the use or sale of their personal data….
“In February, four ISP trade groups, ACA Connects, CTIA, NCTA, and USTelecom, filed a challenge to the Maine law, saying it imposes privacy regulations on them but not on other internet-based companies such as Google, Facebook, Netflix, or Amazon.
“The law ‘imposes no restrictions at all on the use, disclosure, or sale of customer personal information, whether sensitive or not, by the many other entities in the Internet ecosystem or traditional brick-and-mortar retailers,’ the four trade groups say in their lawsuit.”
Please keep in mind – ISPs collect an infinitesimal fraction of the data Google does. And the data to which ISPs have access – is FAR less intrusive than the data Google gets.
There is zero rationality for privacy law that applies to ISPs – and not to Google and their mega-data-grabbing ilk.
Until you remember Google is worth a trillion dollars – and considers throwing its monetary weight around in our nation’s capitals a business imperative.
And speaking of moral preening – covering up amoral competitor-elimination….
Google Wants to Phase Out Support for Third-Party Cookies in Chrome Within Two Years:
“‘This is our strategy to re-architect the standards of the web, to make it privacy-preserving by default,’ Justin Schuh, Google’s director for Chrome engineering, told me.
“‘There’s been a lot of focus around third-party cookies, and that certainly is one of the tracking mechanisms, but that’s just a tracking mechanism and we’re calling it out because it’s the one that people are paying attention to.’”
How very magnanimous of Google. Except….
Chrome is, of course, Google’s Internet browser. Cookies are, of course, the little trackers companies emplace upon your digital presence – to track your online movements and collect all the data they can.
But if you’re using Chrome – Google doesn’t need to emplace cookies to track you. You’re an all-encompassing captive in their browser trap. Everything you do in Chrome – Google sees and collects.
While pretending to be “privacy-preserving by default,” what Google is actually doing is preserving all of your data…exclusively for Google to collect. By eliminating all outside data collection and its collectors.
For the sheerest hypocrisy, its best to go straight to the source. This from the Google Chrome website:
Building a More Private Web: A Path Towards Making Third Party Cookies Obsolete:
“In August, we announced a new initiative (known as Privacy Sandbox) to develop a set of open standards to fundamentally enhance privacy on the web. Our goal for this open source initiative is to make the web more private and secure for users….
“After initial dialogue with the web community, we are confident that with continued iteration and feedback, privacy-preserving and open-standard mechanisms like the Privacy Sandbox can sustain a healthy, ad-supported web in a way that will render third-party cookies obsolete.”
Get that? An “ad-supported web” – ???
And who will be providing those ads? Why Google, of course. Ads created and delivered – predicated upon the reams of your data they will be collecting.
Data they will be collecting all by their lonesome – once they’ve eradicated all their competitors.
Look, Google: Please don’t urinate on my shoes and tell me it’s raining.
Please do not attempt to sell me male cow excrement about a “Privacy Sandbox” and a “more private Web” – when all you’re doing is further solidifying your stranglehold near-monopoly on digital data collection.
The only privacy being secured – is Google’s exclusive access to all our digital data.
This first appeared in Red State.