I just wonder how exactly people think that Google, Facebook and the like make money? How do they think they are paying for gmail if not with their privacy?

This is precisely why I think that theirs is an un-sustainable business model that won't(!) last ... no matter how heretical that concept might seem to be today.

A good analogy would be if UPS or the US Postal Service read every letter that you sent, and also sold statistics about exactly who you sent letters to. The phone company listened to every call that you made, analyzed its content, and sold information to whomever they pleased.

Let the record of history recall exactly how it was that the Germans rounded-up the Jews: they analyzed telephone call records. They'd enter a community with loud jack-boots in a "near miss" to cause the Jews in the area to hurriedly call their friends to "unwind" about what had just (almost) happened. The next time, of course, it didn't "almost" happen ... either to them, or to their friends which had unknowingly been betrayed by a phone call.

No, what's happening in the Internet right now, flies directly in the face of many well-established laws and legal principles with regard to telecommunication (and package delivery and snail-mail). And it's not the Internet's fault. It is also not "the way things have to be."

As I have said (here) before, the present state of affairs opens wide the avenue for a true act of War, initiated not by armies, and not defensible by them. The battleground is the world of the private sector, and hundreds of millions of people and their families lie utterly exposed as individuals. Not because of "guv'mint spying," but because of the wholesale collection of data ... and the eager willingness of companies to hire "cheap labor" on "non-immigrant visas" from ... shall we say ... "all the wrong places." No one knows what data's being collected, and no one knows where that data is, and no one knows who has access to it. But it's not being collected (just) by governments. It's being collected by ... by ... you don't even know who!

Even though Americans are thousands of miles away from the places where America has been waging an un-declared war for fifteen years, millions of people who occupy their data centers (and, data centers abroad) are not.

And this is only one of many scenarios.

They don't. Think, that is.

sorry but google is the biggest company in the world, they corrupt everything/everyone, so why should google loose?
Everything is politics,...

You are sitting and writing this post, you have probably an iphone or android, while you could instead contribute to open source hardwares that will no lock your bank account, body and maybe even soul for next generations.

MS, Apple and Google rule the whole world.

It is nasty to private people from their liberty of choice.

Y'know, I might be revealing my age here ... ... but I clearly remember every single one of these companies as they were being born ...

Therefore, I also clearly remember a time when not a single one of these companies yet existed. (And, believe it or not, "we did just fine, thankye ...")

So: you never have any excuse to let go of your life-preserver and to "simply conclude" that you were pre-ordained to drown.

When the Internet came to town, lots of people were trying to decide what it actually meant. Some people thought of "a universal library." Others thought of "every video you ever saw on MTV" ... uhh ... back in the day when they actually showed videos and "CNN" aired a 30-minute newscast every 30 minutes ...

The notion that "it means that you can eavesdrop(!) on everything that anyone on Planet Earth is doing or saying" ... is ... more recent.

... and the notion that "you can put facial recognition cameras along every mile of Interstate Toll-Road I-75" ... is ... even more recent.

... and the notion that you can, with impunity, fly a "drone" over your neighbor's backyard where here sixteen-year old daughter (yuck, yuck, yuck ...) is "having a very-thorough suntan in the p-r-i-v-a-c-y(!) of her own backyard" ... is ...

Anyhow: "all(!) of these things, actually, very-much remain to be sorted out."

Strange as it may seem, "the arrival of (very!!) 'new things'" ... is not at all ... "new."

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The mantra, "may you live in interesting times," is extremely(!) true for the present generation. You should therefore always bear in mind that "the law has not quite yet caught up with you ... b-u-t it will."

Generations ago, "the telephone" was The Internet of its day. (And, even before that, "the telegraph.") Yea, even before that, "snail-mail service" was not a thing to be relied upon. As each leapfrog of technology has advanced the ability of human beings "here" to communicate with other human beings "there," the law always took a little time to catch up.

"But, it always did," and every time it did, it always erred on the side of privacy.

Even before "the party line" (a technical necessity of its era ...) was completely eliminated, "wiretapping" laws had been introduced. Even though "the scissored letter" was for a brief time a reality of World War, letters were routinely mailed in envelopes that the postman was forbidden to open. And, so on.

Therefore: we should not(!) expect the present state of affairs to become "the new normal."

... and, especially(!) ... we absolutely should not "bank our future business plans," much less our careers(!!!) upon any such cockamamie idea.

... never mind that so many (young ) people already have, and ...

... never mind the 'pundits' who are screeching to us about this "new normal."

no kidding
back in the late 70's and early 80's there was not much of a choice
i was lucky with a ibm at home and apple2 in highschool ( we had 3 of them in the ENTIRE school)


as to google mail , it IS a "free to use" service and as the way that ad words works
you are only shown ads that are using ad words that are relevant to your mail

i get a bunch of LQ emails in my gmail account
but seeing as i use noscript/ad block plus/privacy badger ( depending on browser used)
i never see any ad's

but i should be getting computer sails and MS windows sales ad's

for a VERY SAD!!!! state of a fares LAUGH!!!

view the US house comity grilling google about "ad words" and wanting the SAME ( the Govt.) as business do
and google replied - you are free to buy ad words but that will still not get you the NAMES of the people , because google dose NOT know them

is this about the lawsuit currently discussed in this thread?
if so i'd have to embarassedly admit that i did not read that bit...

I'm old and cranky; no one needs to be sniffing my butt to sell me anything!!

Actually, I think that a lot of corporations have gotten suckered(!) into thinking that "it is absolutely necessary for you to know everything that it is (today ...) possible for you to know about (everyone on Planet Earth, whether they are actually 'your customer' or not ...) in order to sell things.

I frankly think that we somehow became intoxicated by "what is (today ...) 'possible and legal.'"

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