As posted to online acquaintance Jon Pincus today, in relation to our respective disagreement on the probability of “making a difference” in Google’s choices by participating in Google+ to use the platform as a pulpit from which to present the choice, privacy, and civil liberty perspective:
I do not feel in any way oppressed by Google. I have liberated myself from the intentional predation of Google. I can enjoy and participate in considerable discourse without Google (and frankly, it has thus far been of considerably higher quality with exponentially lower amounts of dross and distraction), and I feel no loss of “access” to the public discourse of the world; indeed, I find I feel a profound sense of deliverance combined with a genuine relief that I discovered the depth and vociferousness of the predatory intent behind Google before being too deeply entrenched to make escape feasible.
Simply put, the drivers for corporate interest in long-term pacts with quasi-government entities (i.e., NSTIC, et al), the motivation to continue doing the things they are doing, and to continue profiting on them while blithely continuing to dodge, play word games, and otherwise dangle along the string called “well maybe it can change…” so far, so completely, (and so explicitly admittedly by Google, at every conceivable opportunity to say otherwise), and so utterly outweighs the probability of any of the things you assert and pursue as goals as to make the entire premise of legitimacy of such pursuit “within the den” appear to be profoundly dissonant.
The idea that Google can be forced to change its policies and activities is effectively moot given the massive PAC and lobby who, even now, are busily greasing wheels and dropping dollars on campaigns (your own included, as memory serves); but even if one does posit some amazing alternate reality in which this happens, thinking it will magically change its (now documented, formally stated, and deliberate) predatory interests is, in my opinion, naivete.
Those who care not for being entrenched to the point of dependence, those who perceive “value” in supporting Google’s longevity in the name of trying to change what is now known to be willful predation, and those who simply find the visibility more attractive than the predation is abhorrent, while obviously not understood here, I wish all the good fortune of the world to…. I simply cannot and do not find the cost of those “free” things to be a solid value proposition on any level (let alone upon those relevant to choice, civil liberties, and privacy).
Closing analogy:
“I’m going to prove to cigarette companies how terrible it is to continue making cigarettes by smoking in their lobby until I get lung cancer and die.”
Er… no.