The Creepy Way Facebook, Google And Amazon Profit Off Our Private Data
Our lives and habits are being tracked. Every time we tap in a Google search, every time we click “Like” on Facebook and every time we make an Amazon purchase, we are giving away information about ourselves: our thoughts, our preferences, our behaviors. We are providing data that can be packaged up and sold to companies, which then use that data to try to modify our behavior and steer us toward buying products or using their services. Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff calls it the commodification of human data. In the information era we live in, she explains in her new book, “The Age Of Surveillance Capitalism,” we are the marketable product. It’s a terrifying idea.
So, what is surveillance capitalism?
It’s important to know that in many ways, surveillance capitalism differs dramatically from other forms of capitalism over the last couple of centuries. Capitalism is claiming things that live outside the marketplace, bringing them into the market and turning them into what people call “commodities,” things that can be sold and purchased. Industrial capitalism, which dominated the late 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, famously claimed nature. The trees and the forests and the rivers — these are entities that have a life of their own. Industrial capitalism brought nature into the market dynamic, and nature was reborn. It was called “land,” and it was called “real estate.” That allowed it to be sold and purchased and become the source of profit. Surveillance capitalism proceeds according to this pattern, but with a dark and unexpected twist. So unexpected, in fact, that it’s taken us quite a while to catch on to what they’ve actually done. Surveillance capitalism claims private human experience for the market dynamic. It says that private human experience is now a source of free, raw material — just like harvesting wheat or collecting ore from a mountain side. [We are] a source of free, raw material that can be processed into data, and those data can be computed and sold and purchased and owned. That sequence has created the largest, wealthiest and most powerful companies — like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon — that the world has ever known. All of that begins with the unilateral declaration that private human experience is ours for the taking. Ultimately, what surveillance capitalists are trying to do is sell predictions. It’s not only to know our behavior, but it’s to predict our behavior. That’s how they make their money. Those predictions are not to improve our lives, but rather they’re sold to business customers who have a business interest in knowing what we will do next — because that raises the certainty that they have about how to successfully get us to behave in a way that serves their bottom line.
R
could see them making a trill a year based on inflation & cost of ads on adsense, youtube, and all their other streams of revenue. anywaysss, Googlydoogly to the moon!
L
Judge in Google Case Disturbed That Even ‘Incognito’ Users Are Tracked
(Bloomberg) -- When Google users browse in “Incognito” mode, just how hidden is their activity?The Alphabet Inc. unit says activating the stealth mode in Chrome, or “private browsing” in other browsers, means the company won’t “remember your activity.” But a judge with a history of taking Silicon Valley giants to task about their data collection raised doubts Thursday about whether Google is being as forthright as it needs to be about the personal information it’s collecting from users.At a hearing Thursday in San Jose, California, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said she’s “disturbed” by Google’s data collection practices in a class-action lawsuit that describes the company’s private browsing promises as a “ruse” and seeks $5,000 in damages for each of the millions of people whose privacy has been compromised since June of 2016. Weighing Google’s attempt to get the suit dismissed, Koh said she finds it “unusual” that the company would make the “extra effort” of data collection if it doesn’t use the information to build user profiles or targeted advertising.Google has become a target antitrust complaints in the last year filed by state and federal officials -- as well as businesses -- accusing it of abusing its dominance in digital advertising and online search. Koh has a deeper history with the company as a vocal critic of its privacy policies. She forced Google in one notable case to disclose its scanning of emails to build profiles and target advertising.
In this case, Google is accused of relying on pieces of its code within websites that use its analytics and advertising services to scrape users’ supposedly private browsing history and send copies of it to Google’s servers. Google makes it seem like private browsing mode gives users more control of their data, Amanda Bonn, a lawyer representing users, told Koh. In reality, “Google is saying there’s basically very little you can do to prevent us from collecting your data, and that’s what you should assume we’re doing,” Bonn said.Andrew Schapiro, a lawyer for Google, argued the company’s privacy policy “expressly discloses” its practices. “The data collection at issue is disclosed,” he said.Another lawyer for Google, Stephen Broome, said website owners who contract with the company to use its analytics or other services are well aware of the data collection described in the suit. Broome’s attempt to downplay the privacy concerns by pointing out that the federal court system’s own website uses Google services ended up backfiring. The judge demanded an explanation “about what exactly Google does,” while voicing concern that visitors to the court’s website are unwittingly disclosing information to the company.“I want a declaration from Google on what information they’re collecting on users to the court’s website, and what that’s used for,” Koh told the company’s lawyers.
M
Earnings will only be better from here on out... Doesn’t take a genius to see that one coming...
Justice Department gives judge big Google document request
WASHINGTON, Feb 24 (Reuters) - The Justice Department asked the judge hearing its antitrust fight with Alphabet's Google for a huge list of documents from the search and advertising giant, including some about Facebook and Google's Chrome browser, according to a court filing on Wednesday. Among the documents requested was communications with third parties regarding "any form of cooperation in responding to antitrust investigations or litigation, including communications with Facebook regarding 'Jedi Blue.'" A group of states led by Texas had alleged that Google and Facebook, the two biggest players in online advertising, used a series of deals to consolidate their market power. But the issue was not included in the federal complaint against Google.
Google objected to the document demand, and others, as "overly broad" and potentially privileged but said it was willing to discuss the matter. The documents are requested as part of a pre-trial process for a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit, filed in October, focused on Google's search and search advertising, and a broader state case, which was filed in December. Google has denied wrongdoing in each. Other documents requested by the government included internal Google communications regarding the government investigation and lawsuit; documents dating back to 2000 regarding Google's search engine and how it compares to competitors and documents going back to 2005 regarding the Chrome browser. Google objected to at least portions of each of those document requests. Other of the more than 60 document demands, which Google objected to at least partially, included documents discussing Google's funding of think tanks, or specific academic projects, documents related to the removal of an app from the Play Store and its later restoration.
G
Good info
Netlist - High stakes patent litigation Netlist is taking on giants Google and SK Hynix and finds itself with the upper hand.
Agni Research 15 hr ago 3
1
THESIS
Note: This is outside our normal focus on biotech stocks. A member of another forum we are part of brought this stock to our attention. We got interested in the stock for its strong risk-reward profile. Netlist (OTC: NLST) is suing several large manufacturers of server memory products for infringement of its patents. Most notably, Google, SK Hynix, and Inphi.
RESEARCH
This is straight from the investor portion of Netlist’s website describing the company’s mission: Netlist provides high-performance SSDs and modular memory subsystems to enterprise customers in diverse industries. The Company's NVMe SSD portfolio provides industry-leading performance offered in multiple capacities and form factors. HybriDIMM, Netlist's next-generation storage class memory product, addresses the growing need for real-time analytics in Big Data applications, in-memory databases, high-performance computing and advanced data storage solutions. Netlist also manufactures a line of specialty and legacy memory products to storage customers, appliance customers, system builders and cloud and datacenter customers. Netlist holds a portfolio of patents in the areas of server memory, hybrid memory, storage class memory, rank multiplication and load reduction.
Netlist has been in litigation with Google since 2009 over allegations that Google infringed upon Netlist’s seminal 912 patent. It is a hardware patent for processing commands in an LRDIMM memory module using rank multiplication. Google signed an NDA to take a look at it. It passed on using the technology described in the patent. Netlist alleges that Google infringed the patent by building servers using the 912 patent technology. Netlist sued Google on December 2009 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The judge in the case ordered a random cross section of servers to be examined which showed that Google indeed was using technology described in the 912 patent. Google then asserted that the patent was invalid. In 2010 Google requested an Inter Partes Reexamination of the 912 patent by the USPTO’s (United States Patent and Trademark Office) PTAB (Patent Trial and Appeal Board). While the reexamination was going on the Northern District Court granted a joint request made by both companies to stay the 912 patent infringement lawsuit until the USPTO made its findings. On January 2019 the PTAB upheld the validity of Netlist’s 912 patent. In April 2019 Google appealed this decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In June 2020 the US Court of Appeals upheld the PTAB’s decision on the validity of the 912 patent. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic Google was granted a 6 month extension to decide if it wanted to appeal this decision to the United States Supreme Court. Google did not choose to appeal. On February 16, 2021 Netlist moved to lift the stay in the Northern District of California so the patent infringement lawsuit could continue. The Court granted the request and ordered that both Netlist and Google shall appear for a telephone Case Management Conference on March 11, 2021. At least 7 calendar days prior to the conference, the parties shall meet and confer and file a Joint Case Management Conference Settlement that sets forth the status of the case and proposes a schedule.
So why is the 912 patent a big deal? It is a seminal patent. A seminal patent is defined as a patent that describes an invention so impactful that it creates or shifts the technology space. Netlist believes that the teachings of the 912 patent can be found in various DDR3 and DDR4 server DIMMs (Dual Inline Memory Module) as well as future products that will be produced under the DDR5 server DIMM standards currently being established by the industry. Furthermore, Netlist asserts that the 912 patent enabled Google to build servers with high capacity and rapid memory that allowed said servers to store an entire Oracle database in memory which allowed lightning fast search results. The 912 patent played a large part in Google’s dominance in search. Right now, it is not a question whether Google infringed the 912 patent. That has already been established. Now, Google is at the stage where it can settle with Netlist or go to a jury trial to determine damages. As for the damages, Netlist will most likely use a hedonic pricing model to determine the damages. Hedonic pricing looks at both the product itself (internal factors) and the environment (external factors) in determining pricing. In this case Netlist will argue that the 912 patent established Google’s dominance in search, which allowed monopolist profits that funded Google’s entire ecosystem. While at the same time, Google’s infringement of the patent prevented Netlist from establishing itself in the server memory marketplace.
S
Can't wait to go to trial vs. $NLST. Don't want a settlement. Want to see the look on the jury's face when NLST lawyers explain how Google denied having NLST IP in its servers but was busted when the judge ordered a random cross section of servers to be examined. Also how for 12 years NLST fought to survive while Big G thrived off NLST's 912 patent. Treble damages for willful infringement..if this isn't willful infringement then I don't know what is.
m
It’s the Coca Cola of technology. People use it every day and it’s not going to stop. Big growth coming for Google. Nice and steady.
M
As if everyone forgot about the epic week last week???
You all haven’t seen anything yet...
Remember when it tanked down because of the fear in the beginning of the pandemic??? Was that nothing???
Billy Bong Bong===
If it can drop like a ball... It can bounce like a ball... That the way of the Wall.....
Buy the Airlines!!!
Follow Mr. Pocket by hitting the follow button.......
Maryland becomes the first state to tax on digital ads from Facebook, Google
Maryland has approved the country's first tax on the revenue brought in from digital advertisements placed by companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon. On Friday, the State Senate voted to override the governor's veto of the measure following a similar vote from the House of Delegates, The New York Times reports. The measure is expected to generate as much as $250 million in its first year.
The Maryland tax specifically applies to digital ads that are displayed within the state. It's also levied based on the ad sales that a company generates. Companies that make at least $100 million to $1 billion a year will be taxed at a 2.5% rate. Companies that make more than $15 billion — which includes Facebook and google — will face a 10% tax on digital ad revenue.
Legislators in Connecticut and Indiana have already introduced similar measures to tax social media giants. The tax legislation is just part of a growing debate about the dominance and power of technology giants. In the U.S., companies like Facebook and Google are facing multiple antitrust lawsuits. Antitrust legislation introduced at the federal level could target those companies. The measures in the U.S. also follow in the footsteps of governments in Europe, which have introduced both new restrictions targeting Facebook and Google.
s
In the long-term, we can always count on our GOOG stock investment. Been holding since 890.
C
Bears are partying when i see clear and strong signs of climax selling in week 3-4 of this sell off the last several days. This is bullish if you are an investor who wanted speculation out of this market. Many many small and mid caps down 50-60% and many big tech down 15-30%. We dreamed of this many many months ago to be able to buy into pure fear again $aapl $amzn $sq $ostk $nflz $googl $nndm
B
GOOG showing incredible resilience through this correction!
O
google stock has only direction to go and it is Up and when it goes , it goes big. in at 1300 with 110 share and it is by far the most stable and rewarding stock to have in the portfolio. self driving car Wayom when it hits the market, will be big news and it will drive ve google price higher . we may see it in 3000-4000 range. Google, like Amazon, I do not think they will split the stock because these kind of stocks is for serious investors
J
Nasdaq down 12% in one month, GOOG down about 1% in last month, great confidence in buyers.
H
Nice day only down -2.3%, great stock and company should have bought this years ago.
D
Best company ever....mints money. Always a buy but everyone should load the boat here. 2500 coming.
T
Looking for a split announcement next ER .
S
Hi fellows investors of GOOG,this is my advice..Sell 10 shares of your GOOG holding and with the 20000 dollars buy tomorrow 10000 shares of NLST,which is suing the company for patent infringement.You will be even richer in a week with a minimum risk..Good luck,,!!
a
Who cares, and why you even write a book here, everyone comes to this chat just wants to know this stock will go up or down..
Our lives and habits are being tracked. Every time we tap in a Google search, every time we click “Like” on Facebook and every time we make an Amazon purchase, we are giving away information about ourselves: our thoughts, our preferences, our behaviors.
We are providing data that can be packaged up and sold to companies, which then use that data to try to modify our behavior and steer us toward buying products or using their services.
Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff calls it the commodification of human data. In the information era we live in, she explains in her new book, “The Age Of Surveillance Capitalism,” we are the marketable product. It’s a terrifying idea.
So, what is surveillance capitalism?
It’s important to know that in many ways, surveillance capitalism differs dramatically from other forms of capitalism over the last couple of centuries. Capitalism is claiming things that live outside the marketplace, bringing them into the market and turning them into what people call “commodities,” things that can be sold and purchased.
Industrial capitalism, which dominated the late 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, famously claimed nature. The trees and the forests and the rivers — these are entities that have a life of their own. Industrial capitalism brought nature into the market dynamic, and nature was reborn. It was called “land,” and it was called “real estate.” That allowed it to be sold and purchased and become the source of profit.
Surveillance capitalism proceeds according to this pattern, but with a dark and unexpected twist. So unexpected, in fact, that it’s taken us quite a while to catch on to what they’ve actually done. Surveillance capitalism claims private human experience for the market dynamic.
It says that private human experience is now a source of free, raw material — just like harvesting wheat or collecting ore from a mountain side. [We are] a source of free, raw material that can be processed into data, and those data can be computed and sold and purchased and owned.
That sequence has created the largest, wealthiest and most powerful companies — like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon — that the world has ever known. All of that begins with the unilateral declaration that private human experience is ours for the taking.
Ultimately, what surveillance capitalists are trying to do is sell predictions. It’s not only to know our behavior, but it’s to predict our behavior. That’s how they make their money.
Those predictions are not to improve our lives, but rather they’re sold to business customers who have a business interest in knowing what we will do next — because that raises the certainty that they have about how to successfully get us to behave in a way that serves their bottom line.
(Bloomberg) -- When Google users browse in “Incognito” mode, just how hidden is their activity?The Alphabet Inc. unit says activating the stealth mode in Chrome, or “private browsing” in other browsers, means the company won’t “remember your activity.” But a judge with a history of taking Silicon Valley giants to task about their data collection raised doubts Thursday about whether Google is being as forthright as it needs to be about the personal information it’s collecting from users.At a hearing Thursday in San Jose, California, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said she’s “disturbed” by Google’s data collection practices in a class-action lawsuit that describes the company’s private browsing promises as a “ruse” and seeks $5,000 in damages for each of the millions of people whose privacy has been compromised since June of 2016.
Weighing Google’s attempt to get the suit dismissed, Koh said she finds it “unusual” that the company would make the “extra effort” of data collection if it doesn’t use the information to build user profiles or targeted advertising.Google has become a target antitrust complaints in the last year filed by state and federal officials -- as well as businesses -- accusing it of abusing its dominance in digital advertising and online search. Koh has a deeper history with the company as a vocal critic of its privacy policies. She forced Google in one notable case to disclose its scanning of emails to build profiles and target advertising.
In this case, Google is accused of relying on pieces of its code within websites that use its analytics and advertising services to scrape users’ supposedly private browsing history and send copies of it to Google’s servers. Google makes it seem like private browsing mode gives users more control of their data, Amanda Bonn, a lawyer representing users, told Koh. In reality, “Google is saying there’s basically very little you can do to prevent us from collecting your data, and that’s what you should assume we’re doing,” Bonn said.Andrew Schapiro, a lawyer for Google, argued the company’s privacy policy “expressly discloses” its practices. “The data collection at issue is disclosed,” he said.Another lawyer for Google, Stephen Broome, said website owners who contract with the company to use its analytics or other services are well aware of the data collection described in the suit.
Broome’s attempt to downplay the privacy concerns by pointing out that the federal court system’s own website uses Google services ended up backfiring.
The judge demanded an explanation “about what exactly Google does,” while voicing concern that visitors to the court’s website are unwittingly disclosing information to the company.“I want a declaration from Google on what information they’re collecting on users to the court’s website, and what that’s used for,” Koh told the company’s lawyers.
Buy the Airlines!!!
#AAL #UAL #BA #LUV #JBLU #DAL #MESA #ALK #SKYW #HA #^DJI #^IXIC #GOLD #TSLA #AAPL #GME #MSFT #FB #AMZN #GOOGL #EBY #GME
WASHINGTON, Feb 24 (Reuters) - The Justice Department asked the judge hearing its antitrust fight with Alphabet's Google for a huge list of documents from the search and advertising giant, including some about Facebook and Google's Chrome browser, according to a court filing on Wednesday.
Among the documents requested was communications with third parties regarding "any form of cooperation in responding to antitrust investigations or litigation, including communications with Facebook regarding 'Jedi Blue.'"
A group of states led by Texas had alleged that Google and Facebook, the two biggest players in online advertising, used a series of deals to consolidate their market power. But the issue was not included in the federal complaint against Google.
Google objected to the document demand, and others, as "overly broad" and potentially privileged but said it was willing to discuss the matter.
The documents are requested as part of a pre-trial process for a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit, filed in October, focused on Google's search and search advertising, and a broader state case, which was filed in December. Google has denied wrongdoing in each.
Other documents requested by the government included internal Google communications regarding the government investigation and lawsuit; documents dating back to 2000 regarding Google's search engine and how it compares to competitors and documents going back to 2005 regarding the Chrome browser. Google objected to at least portions of each of those document requests.
Other of the more than 60 document demands, which Google objected to at least partially, included documents discussing Google's funding of think tanks, or specific academic projects, documents related to the removal of an app from the Play Store and its later restoration.
Netlist - High stakes patent litigation
Netlist is taking on giants Google and SK Hynix and finds itself with the upper hand.
Agni Research
15 hr ago
3
1
THESIS
Note: This is outside our normal focus on biotech stocks. A member of another forum we are part of brought this stock to our attention. We got interested in the stock for its strong risk-reward profile. Netlist (OTC: NLST) is suing several large manufacturers of server memory products for infringement of its patents. Most notably, Google, SK Hynix, and Inphi.
RESEARCH
This is straight from the investor portion of Netlist’s website describing the company’s mission: Netlist provides high-performance SSDs and modular memory subsystems to enterprise customers in diverse industries. The Company's NVMe SSD portfolio provides industry-leading performance offered in multiple capacities and form factors. HybriDIMM, Netlist's next-generation storage class memory product, addresses the growing need for real-time analytics in Big Data applications, in-memory databases, high-performance computing and advanced data storage solutions. Netlist also manufactures a line of specialty and legacy memory products to storage customers, appliance customers, system builders and cloud and datacenter customers. Netlist holds a portfolio of patents in the areas of server memory, hybrid memory, storage class memory, rank multiplication and load reduction.
Netlist has been in litigation with Google since 2009 over allegations that Google infringed upon Netlist’s seminal 912 patent. It is a hardware patent for processing commands in an LRDIMM memory module using rank multiplication. Google signed an NDA to take a look at it. It passed on using the technology described in the patent. Netlist alleges that Google infringed the patent by building servers using the 912 patent technology. Netlist sued Google on December 2009 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The judge in the case ordered a random cross section of servers to be examined which showed that Google indeed was using technology described in the 912 patent. Google then asserted that the patent was invalid. In 2010 Google requested an Inter Partes Reexamination of the 912 patent by the USPTO’s (United States Patent and Trademark Office) PTAB (Patent Trial and Appeal Board). While the reexamination was going on the Northern District Court granted a joint request made by both companies to stay the 912 patent infringement lawsuit until the USPTO made its findings. On January 2019 the PTAB upheld the validity of Netlist’s 912 patent. In April 2019 Google appealed this decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In June 2020 the US Court of Appeals upheld the PTAB’s decision on the validity of the 912 patent. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic Google was granted a 6 month extension to decide if it wanted to appeal this decision to the United States Supreme Court. Google did not choose to appeal. On February 16, 2021 Netlist moved to lift the stay in the Northern District of California so the patent infringement lawsuit could continue. The Court granted the request and ordered that both Netlist and Google shall appear for a telephone Case Management Conference on March 11, 2021. At least 7 calendar days prior to the conference, the parties shall meet and confer and file a Joint Case Management Conference Settlement that sets forth the status of the case and proposes a schedule.
So why is the 912 patent a big deal? It is a seminal patent. A seminal patent is defined as a patent that describes an invention so impactful that it creates or shifts the technology space. Netlist believes that the teachings of the 912 patent can be found in various DDR3 and DDR4 server DIMMs (Dual Inline Memory Module) as well as future products that will be produced under the DDR5 server DIMM standards currently being established by the industry. Furthermore, Netlist asserts that the 912 patent enabled Google to build servers with high capacity and rapid memory that allowed said servers to store an entire Oracle database in memory which allowed lightning fast search results. The 912 patent played a large part in Google’s dominance in search. Right now, it is not a question whether Google infringed the 912 patent. That has already been established. Now, Google is at the stage where it can settle with Netlist or go to a jury trial to determine damages. As for the damages, Netlist will most likely use a hedonic pricing model to determine the damages. Hedonic pricing looks at both the product itself (internal factors) and the environment (external factors) in determining pricing. In this case Netlist will argue that the 912 patent established Google’s dominance in search, which allowed monopolist profits that funded Google’s entire ecosystem. While at the same time, Google’s infringement of the patent prevented Netlist from establishing itself in the server memory marketplace.
People use it every day and it’s not going to stop. Big growth coming for Google. Nice and steady.
You all haven’t seen anything yet...
Remember when it tanked down because of the fear in the beginning of the pandemic??? Was that nothing???
Billy Bong Bong===
If it can drop like a ball... It can bounce like a ball... That the way of the Wall.....
Buy the Airlines!!!
Follow Mr. Pocket by hitting the follow button.......
#AAL #UAL #BA #LUV #JBLU #DAL #MESA #ALK #SKYW #HA #^DJI #^IXIC #GOLD #TSLA #AAPL #GME #MSFT #FB #AMZN #GOOGL #EBY #GME
Maryland has approved the country's first tax on the revenue brought in from digital advertisements placed by companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon.
On Friday, the State Senate voted to override the governor's veto of the measure following a similar vote from the House of Delegates, The New York Times reports. The measure is expected to generate as much as $250 million in its first year.
The Maryland tax specifically applies to digital ads that are displayed within the state. It's also levied based on the ad sales that a company generates. Companies that make at least $100 million to $1 billion a year will be taxed at a 2.5% rate. Companies that make more than $15 billion — which includes Facebook and google — will face a 10% tax on digital ad revenue.
Legislators in Connecticut and Indiana have already introduced similar measures to tax social media giants.
The tax legislation is just part of a growing debate about the dominance and power of technology giants. In the U.S., companies like Facebook and Google are facing multiple antitrust lawsuits. Antitrust legislation introduced at the federal level could target those companies.
The measures in the U.S. also follow in the footsteps of governments in Europe, which have introduced both new restrictions targeting Facebook and Google.