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by colinprince·17y ago·view on hn ↗
I can almost imagine Google's inquisitive feelers crawling out of my computer, down my power cord, into the electric wiring up to my meter.

They never supply something for free unless it will provide them the data they crave.

Yes I know, "No personally identifying information will be shared" blah blah blah but this such an obvious data grab.

2 comments
This is google.org as opposed to google.com, so it might just be philanthropy.
They never supply something for free unless it will provide them the data they crave.

Why should they supply you anything for free?

Why should they supply you anything for free?

If you're implying that I'm suggesting Google should give me something for free, I'm not.

Just orienting this "service" in a way that shows that the users are, freely, giving something to Google.

I didn't mean to come off as short.

This seems to be a mutually beneficial service. The users stand to gain as can be seen from the testimonials here http://www.google.org/powermeter/demoproject.html

So the users aren't giving away anything freely.

Google obviously gains , with hard data about consumer usage.

They can make money just from eyeballs, so they don't need to use data. Normally Google looks for data that increase the value of advertizing space but I don't have any idea what they can do with you electric meater numbers.
The data could be useful ...

There could a lot of data gleaned about TV viewers , for example .. by analyzing power usage trends during tv show times. If a show is watched more , then advertisers would want to target that show more ...

Google grabs for data to improve results for their AI . The more data, the better AI works; exponentianally more so than when improving algorythm.