Sam Rijver:
I’m using quite a few iHealth products to measure a few things regarding my health. I have measurements of my blood pressure, blood-oxigen levels, weight, activity and sleep patterns and more. I do this because it’s useful information I can use to monitor my own health. More importantly I can (choose to) provide this information to my physician during my yearly check-up. I have yearly check-ups due to heart disease running in the family and with the iHealth products I can provide a great amount of data points for about 80% of the tests they run on such a check. It’s great. It’s useful. It’s also scaring the crap out of me that Google might go out and buy the company for an insane amount of money. I just can’t shake the feeling that if that happens I would feel worried about the implications of Google getting their hands on that kind of data.
For me, all of this commentary comes back to simple point: people don’t trust Google. Eventually that has to come back and bite them in the ass.
It’s not about Google. It’s about me and my data.
The linked article mentions that the author has ownership and complete control over the data about himself.
This is the crucial point, not which companies are involved.
At some point during the last decade, Google’s mission shifted from “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” to me.
They want now to collect my information and make it universally accessible and useful go Google’s customers.
Google’s customers not being you and me, ie their users.
Google is evil.
Goodle customers are the not ‘you ‘and ‘me’. Google customers are the people that pay them. Get that shit straight.