Comment by coldtea
5 years ago
>Or even to intentionally harm privacy or further business goals at users' expense?
Yes (and obviously).
Google, and other SaaS, have used such dark patterns to collect more user identity data (user profile info is what they ultimately sell - even if sold to advertisers "anonymized", the profile is richer and more worth the more data they have on you).
What never seems to come up is that as far as ads are concerned and with the amount and kinds of data that these companies are and have been collecting, your name is worth zilch. "Anonymized" is a red herring.