alt Hacker NewsNo - they are an advertising company. It is to their advantage to be ahead of the game with something like federated ML if that is where society is headed. To say Google has no positive impact is absurd - engineers there generally care about protecting user data. There is probably better access controls at Google than anywhere else. Sure there are pressures like you said but a gross misplace of user trust is what would destroy them.
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
they kind of made the game, they are hardly victims here. I shouldn't have to be in a position to decide whether I trust them with a profile of all of my history and activities, especially when I never had an option to opt out, much less opt in.