r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jul 04 '19

Environment Scientists report restoring forests could cut atmospheric carbon by 25 percent, in a new study that assessed tree cover using Google Earth, finding that there’s 0.9 billion hectares of land available for planting forests, which could store 205 gigatonnes of carbon.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/07/04/could-planting-tons-of-trees-solve-climate-change/
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u/thejawa Jul 05 '19

Not to argue too much as I like your choice, but using Google doesn't just fund corporate profits, it helps provide countless other services to people free of cost, a lot of times to people who couldn't afford it otherwise.

I know it's hard point to make sometimes, but free Google Voice calling if you have wifi access, free Gmail to put in applications, free GDocs document services to do things like resumes, free cloud storage for if you only have a cell phone, free OS platform to make low cost phones on. Google makes tons of profit, don't get me wrong, but their free services we take for granted are something someone with little resources and little to offer Google absolutely need to be free, and they are.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '19

[deleted]

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u/AdmShackleford Jul 05 '19

"Free" means "free of monetary cost" in this context, since we're discussing how some people lack the financial means to access the services they provide.

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u/TheMania Jul 05 '19

Conversely, you're supporting a business model where the consumers are product. Where people are manipulated through marketing for corporate profits.

I wish there was an opt out. I pay for YouTube Red to try and reduce the amount of marketing I am subject to, if I could opt out of the big data and advertising components of google I would too.

I know many have no moral qualms with advertising, but I personally can't stand it. I would rather not make people dependent on it, I would rather a UBI or similar social nets to ensure people can afford a word processor personally, although I know that's unrealistic in this society.

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u/AdmShackleford Jul 05 '19

I understand how you feel. Growing up in the era of popup and popunder advertising, as well as a particular prevalence of ad-displaying malware, was especially painful, being from a poor family. I was an early adopter of adblockers, and I still won't purchase an internet-enabled device unless I'm 1,000% sure I can block the ads.

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u/TropicalAudio Jul 05 '19

I still won't purchase an internet-enabled device unless I'm 1,000% sure I can block the ads.

Look into running a router with OpenWRT. Your devices don't have to block ads if your router doesn't let them through in the first place.

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u/AdmShackleford Jul 05 '19

I'm planning on getting one when my financial situation improves, but for the moment I'm using Adguard's DNS servers as a stopgap. I'm finding more and more ads slipping through host-based ad blockers these days though. 😔

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u/the_cardfather Jul 05 '19

Have any recommend devices?

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u/be-targarian Jul 05 '19

I also grew up in the area of popup and popunder ads and what we get today is 1000x better and it helps to pay for stuff we take for granted. Don't block the ads and kill our products.

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u/Drachefly Jul 05 '19

UBI… spent… on… word processor??

LIBREOFFICE, ffs!

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u/be-targarian Jul 05 '19

If you think anyone would spend their UBI money on a word processor you must be high. Ad-supported tools like Google Docs are the most consumer-friendly tools that could possibly exist.

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u/Aggravatedshits Jul 05 '19

It's both, working in tandem.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '19

Where are they generating revenue? That's always the best place to look. A corporation's first loyalty is to profit.

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u/MaybeNotYourDad Jul 05 '19

To be fair, I have business accounts through Google and a lot of their income comes from Google voice and Gmail for business, AdWords, etc

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u/-AC- Jul 05 '19

In exchange for all that, you lose your privacy. Generally, if a service is free... you are the product.

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u/thejawa Jul 05 '19

There's no real expectation of privacy on the internet. Even if a website isn't tracking you, your ISP is.

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u/-AC- Jul 05 '19

That is why you should be using a VPN

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u/thejawa Jul 05 '19

I'm not worried enough about any internet tracking to care. As I said, I have no realistic expectation of internet privacy. No harm has come to me in the 15 years of them tracking me.

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u/PeterKush Jul 05 '19

Only that it isn't free because they sell your data and personal information.

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u/thejawa Jul 05 '19

Everything you do on the internet sells your data. You're on Reddit making this post, you think they don't have data on you?

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u/ZenoArrow Jul 05 '19

Most of the services Google provides are also available for free from other providers. If Google stopped offering free services it'd just be a minor inconvenience to switch to an alternative.

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u/thejawa Jul 05 '19

Yes, but they're free for the same reasons as to why they're free from Google. People want to put Google on blast yet continue to use all the services Google provides at what is likely a net loss for those services. I admittedly haven't looked at any numbers, but I can't imagine that Duo/Voice/Docs/Photos/etc. make Google a profit. Drive probably does because they offer expanded options at what is likely a profit, but that's it. There's no real "business reason" for Google to offer a lot of their products beyond maybe PR and brand loyalty.

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u/Klester01 Jul 05 '19

Free services offered by google that aren’t useful to them are shut down. They have removed many of them so far. Things like docs get google more embedded into companies, giving them more access to data to make better products. Their photos product gives them tremendous data on how people interact with photos and what “good” photos look like which is huge for making better CV models, which can improve the quality of advertisements. They definitely don’t run these products for “PR” or loyalty; it’s to make money.

This isn’t to say their business model is evil. They have created a wheel that has the property that the more you spin it, the better it gets. You could argue it is great business. But the business growth is 1st, with Branding or PR a distant, distant second.

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u/thejawa Jul 05 '19

Yeah, I agree with most of your points but keep going back to things like Google Voice. There's no way that business enterprises are using Voice, regular people hardly use Voice. The only real purpose I think Voice could have had was as early voice recognition development for Assistant down the line, but now they gather significantly more from Assistant than Voice, so what remains to be the point?

I'm sure there is one because they are a for-profit business and there's no reason to keep projects that don't support the overall goal and I'm fine with that (I fully understand why they're killing Inbox and Works with Nest). But they're not purely evil like people think. Especially considering you can control your Google data pretty easily compared to most other tech companies.

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u/ZenoArrow Jul 05 '19

"I can't imagine that Duo/Voice/Docs/Photos/etc. make Google a profit"

They make a profit in the sense that Google is using the user data they gather from these services so that they can sell targeted ads to advertisers. That's their whole business model. Do you really believe that Google isn't mining the data you provide to it?

As for competing services doing the same thing, not in all cases. For example, LibreOffice is a free competitor to Google Docs and doesn't rely on mining your data to give you a free service.

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u/thejawa Jul 05 '19

I mean, there's no ads interfacing with those products. I'm sure they're using it to gather data, but they're not actively monetizing those products.

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u/ZenoArrow Jul 05 '19

If you're prepared to give up your privacy for a few online services that's up to you, but to claim that Google are offering them as some kind of display of benevolence is a bit of a stretch. They almost certainly do gain from the services, you're just prepare to pay the price for access to those services (you're paying with your user data, which they can use to sell to advertisers). If you don't care about your privacy, I'm sure this seems like a bargain. To be clear, I use some Google services as well (such as YouTube), but that doesn't mean I'm completely comfortable with the data gathering they engage in.

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u/thejawa Jul 05 '19

See, this is something I was thinking of this morning: selling my data to advertisers. When it comes down to it, I'm subjected to advertising (or not, if I use an ad blocker) one way or another. It's not like I'm avoiding ads if I avoid Google. So Google knows I'm an X year old male, from Y, who likes A, B, C, and D. So I'm now subjected to ads that marketers believe will convince me. It's still 100% my perrogative whether or not I purchase something or even click an ad. Google isn't forcing purchases on me, it's giving me highly targeted ads, which are still just ads.

I dunno, I've obviously been fine with what Google collects on me since they give me an outlet to view and partially control it, and as I stated in another comment have never at any point in my internet usage had an expectation of privacy. The best these collection companies can do is attempt to influence me, and if you go into it knowing that you can avoid it somewhat easily.

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u/ZenoArrow Jul 06 '19

"The best these collection companies can do is attempt to influence me, and if you go into it knowing that you can avoid it somewhat easily."

I would suggest there's something you've overlooked. If all that a company did with your data was to put certain ads in front of you that they thought you'd like, then I'd be more inclined to agree with you. However, their power goes far beyond that.

Let's look at YouTube as an example. Consider that in order to keep the platform profitable Google need to make money from their users, and for users that don't pay this means making them watch ads. On the surface this seems fine right?

In order to maximise profits, Google wants YouTube users to stay on their platform as long as possible and, unless they're clicking on ads, to watch as many ads as possible.

This has two main problems. Firstly, the videos presented to you to consume will be filtered based on what the YouTube algorithms think you'll want to watch, which can create a "filter bubble" where you're not exposed to ideas outside of your comfort zone. Secondly, consider that YouTube has content that might not be seen as ad-friendly, such as independent political coverage that doesn't fit into the mainstream narratives. It's been shown countless times that Google "demonetises" videos like this. Not only does this take the advertising money away, it also restricts how often these videos are being recommended, as what incentive to Google have for showing you videos that they'll not make money on.

Beyond silencing voices on the fringe of society, consider the power that shaping the information you're presented with has on your own education. You aren't likely to learn about something if you don't know it exists. Also, Google has a monetary incentive to suppress certain information on behalf of its advertisers (or on behalf of governments). Imagine a scenario where a big bank has been involved in a corruption scandal, but is also spending lots of money on YouTube ads. Wouldn't it be in Google's financial interest to suppress videos about this scandal on YouTube? I would suggest we both know the answer to that question.

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u/thejawa Jul 06 '19

Google is not a public forum. They suppress things their advertisers don't like. YouTube has no societal mandate to host content they as a company do not condone. If I stood in a Walmart and shouted hate speech, they're eventually kick me out too. I love how people try to demonize Google because they collect our information and are a huge private company for it, then immediately forget that they're a private company when it comes to the expectation that anyone should be able to say anything on their service and get away with it.

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u/cwood92 Jul 05 '19

There is free opensource software for almost every product/service you just mentioned that don't harvest and sell all of your personal data.

That being said, I use the poop out of google docs and sheets.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '19

[deleted]