– It’s important to distinguish what we’re doing now, which is promiscuous, de-anonymizing tracking, from metrics and tracking in general. There are plenty of ways of doing metrics, and even tracking, in ways that don’t compromise privacy.
– Companies and individuals still need to promote themselves. Advertising and content marketing would continue to exist, and ‘online’ provides straight-to-transaction functionality that would not go away, even if tracking does.
– We need search. But we don’t need Google to own and/or gate all the world’s personal information. Luckily, we know plenty about how to make search happen, with or without Google. Paid search would be okay — I’d pay $5 a month for Google Search, and another $10 a month for Docs, Drive, etc. That’s a nice business for a Google about 1/5th the size that Google is now: one that doesn’t own all my personal information.
I don’t mind looked at ads, but I do mind when they’re spying back at me. The ad-supported content industry has earned this problem by sneaking around and betraying everyone’s trust.
I’ve only had targeting based on stuff I chose to share with Google, so I wouldn’t blame them for any wrongdoing… They also tell you what information they’re using for targeting at https://www.google.com/settings/ads/authenticated , which you can customise / clean-up.
I did, on the other hand, get creepily targeted emails from another company – I’d gone to an online store while not logged in and left without providing any information (or so I thought), but got an email later reminding me to buy the item I’d only looked at.
John Hardy Developer 
Well, it would also be Google that goes away, which takes with it YouTube, Google+ and Google search.
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True but the web would be a lot smaller so we could relaunch Alta Vista 😀
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It wouldn’t be smaller at all.
– It’s important to distinguish what we’re doing now, which is promiscuous, de-anonymizing tracking, from metrics and tracking in general. There are plenty of ways of doing metrics, and even tracking, in ways that don’t compromise privacy.
– Companies and individuals still need to promote themselves. Advertising and content marketing would continue to exist, and ‘online’ provides straight-to-transaction functionality that would not go away, even if tracking does.
– We need search. But we don’t need Google to own and/or gate all the world’s personal information. Luckily, we know plenty about how to make search happen, with or without Google. Paid search would be okay — I’d pay $5 a month for Google Search, and another $10 a month for Docs, Drive, etc. That’s a nice business for a Google about 1/5th the size that Google is now: one that doesn’t own all my personal information.
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I don’t mind looked at ads, but I do mind when they’re spying back at me. The ad-supported content industry has earned this problem by sneaking around and betraying everyone’s trust.
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Indeed. Interestingly it was Google, once the internet’s most trusted company, that cashed it all in for this model.
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I’ve only had targeting based on stuff I chose to share with Google, so I wouldn’t blame them for any wrongdoing… They also tell you what information they’re using for targeting at https://www.google.com/settings/ads/authenticated , which you can customise / clean-up.
I did, on the other hand, get creepily targeted emails from another company – I’d gone to an online store while not logged in and left without providing any information (or so I thought), but got an email later reminding me to buy the item I’d only looked at.
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Yeah I’ve had those are follow me around the web for weeks. It’s hard to imagine that this would be a very effective tactic.
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