Comment by charcircuit
6 hours ago
Yet, in the big picture Google is doing a good enough job that those information leaks have not caused them harm. When you really zoom in you can find some issues, but the real world impact of them is not big enough to influence most consumers.
What sort of hypothetical harm are you imagining here? Suppose the information leaks were a serious issue to me - what are my options? Switch to Apple? I doubt most consumers are going to consider something like postmarketos.
The carriers in the US were caught selling e911 location data to pretty much whoever was willing to pay. Did that hurt them? Not as far as I can tell, largely because there is no alternative and (bizarrely) such behavior isn't considered by our current legislation to be a criminal act. Consumers are forced to accept that they are simply along for the ride.
Lets say that Google let anyone visit google.com/photos?u=username to see all of the images from their camera roll and left this online not caring about the privacy implications.
People would stop taking photos with their camera that they didn't want to be public.
People would presumably switch away from gcam and the associated gallery app. Or they would simply remove their google account from the phone. They have realistic options in that case (albeit somewhat downgraded in most cases).
If Google did something egregious enough legislation might actually get passed because realistically, if public outcry doesn't convince them to change direction, what other option is available? At present it's that or switch to the only other major player in town.