The idea of owning a tablet by Google creeps me out to no end. I just can't picture myself using this without the lingering feeling of having Big Brother tracking me, watching me, keeping tabs on what sites I visit and what content I post online.
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Privacy is a legitimate concern but it's not limited to Google. Apple is tracking you, your ISP is tracking you, your phone company is tracking you, etc. Just root it and put a custom ROM on it if you're that worried (and use a VPN, DuckDuckGo, TOR, tinfoil hat, etc.).
Luckily any tablet you choose will have significant tracking capabilities...
Apple isn't in the business of exploiting your private data to advertise products/services/content from third parties at you though. The incentives are completely different.
Thats why the have built-in facebook and twitter support.
They sell you as well dont believe in fairy tales.
And to be honest im fine with google having my data they have a solid record for keeping things in line.
Facebook and Twitter support have to be explicitly activated in order to send any data to those parties. In the case of the optional Facebook contact sync feature, it even warns that the data in your contacts list will be sent to Facebook. When submitting a post to either Facebook or Twitter, including the location is optional and off by default.
Making the location visible on your post is optional and off by default; sending the location is not, as far as I understand.
Location Services doesn't start up until the "Add Location" text is tapped. The best Facebook or Twitter could do would be to geolocate based on the IP address.
Sure they are, they're just not as good at it as Google is. Apple has built Facebook and advertising into iOS. Besides their own advertising network, Apple made support for third party tracking using the IDFA (ID For Advertising, it was created after they decided using the UDID for ad tracking was not ideal).
> Apple has built Facebook and advertising into iOS
That simplifies things in a very reductive way.
Don't they own/operate the iAds network?
They are. But no more than any other vendor is.
The difference is Google gives you all sorts of services to export those insights and use them for your own benefit. Most of the google tracking data is exported (with the big exception being the backing to Google Now for card selection). But most people don't realize how much data you can farm from the Latitude API.
The problem we face is that a lot of the features we want delivered from our products are really only achievable if we offer up our data for analysis to some big external compute farm. We aren't at the point yet where your mobile devices can do it in house. So we have things we want, but the only way to get those things is to take a privacy risk.
But this is hardly a new situation. Why do you trust your banks not to do this? Credit card providers? Stores? Loan and insurance issuers? Cellphone vendors? I'm asking why you are not creeped out or outraged all the time because a trivial search of the landscape reveals all these institutions are doing such things but not providing any value back to you for it.
a) how is this different from browsing on your desktop?
b) why would a company as big as Google care about what a single user does?
> b) why would a company as big as Google care about what a single user does?
Nice try, Google secret agent :P
No, seriously, Google is interested in what you browse and already tracks it (anonymously, I hope) to target ads.
So it all leads to your first point. There's really no difference in practice. But in potential it's true that a device with a cellular network connection can provide more interesting location infos than a desktop tied to your desk.
At least you can check the source code.
The Nexus devices all have unlocked bootloaders, go get Cyanogenmod if you are concerned.