"As with Apple, the best way for Google to avoid being ordered to turn over data on its users is to not collect or retain that data in the first place. And, as with Apple, the next best thing is to give users the power to turn off that data-collection and data-retention altogether, something Google's gotten marginally better at in the past year."
Google is very aggressive in its data collection. Its scope keeps increasing not vice versa. For example, I have been experimenting with blocking some of YouTube's data collection using a forward proxy to deny certain request URLs. It appears one could do this within Developer Tools using request blocking and regex. But who would ever use that. Is it any coincidence this is not named "User Tools".
It is possible to watch YouTube videos without having every interaction with the website logged and collected by Google as "data". You will not see any ads if you do not use the Google-supplied Javascript video player. However avoiding data collection takes some effort on the part of the user. Tech companies know this, they know most people are not really "into computers" and cannot be bothered to spend time fiddling with them. We cannot expect Google to make avoiding data collection "easy" for anyone. This is no different from expecting tech companies to "self-regulate".
Google is very aggressive in its data collection. Its scope keeps increasing not vice versa. For example, I have been experimenting with blocking some of YouTube's data collection using a forward proxy to deny certain request URLs. It appears one could do this within Developer Tools using request blocking and regex. But who would ever use that. Is it any coincidence this is not named "User Tools".
It is possible to watch YouTube videos without having every interaction with the website logged and collected by Google as "data". You will not see any ads if you do not use the Google-supplied Javascript video player. However avoiding data collection takes some effort on the part of the user. Tech companies know this, they know most people are not really "into computers" and cannot be bothered to spend time fiddling with them. We cannot expect Google to make avoiding data collection "easy" for anyone. This is no different from expecting tech companies to "self-regulate".