U.S. senator asks FTC to probe Apple, Google

[JackRiddler]

12. Distraction. Chipping around at the edges.

Everyone's seen the ads and Google has just had a big coming out party as your friendly big brother with the new unified "privacy" policy. (Apple is the next-closest octopus.) They track you through 60 different services and for many of these like search they've achieved near-monopoly status* -- thanks to the consumer, but that doesn't justify the surveillance profiles they now have on every user.

This is typical politician self-profiling by pointing to some peanuts violation (strictly alleged) instead of the elephant in the room. It's easy to come up with rules for some bullshit like this, very hard to figure out how to really protect privacy rights in this age when all sites track you on behalf of multiple entities and almost everyone has been trained to help (including to help track those who might be less willing to help themselves).

--

( * notwithstanding the joke "search" services offered by the higher profile competitors like MS, or the existence of genuine search alternatives.)