Yes, and they leak info to advertisers, as I point out here [1].<p>And I know it is against the rules to complain about this, but somehow that link got downvoted for mysterious reasons. I think I'm raising a valid point here.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12899160" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12899160</a>
I like the related materials at the end, particularly the layperson's description of their facial recognition tech <a href="https://www.google.com/policies/technologies/pattern-recognition/" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/policies/technologies/pattern-recogni...</a><p>I'd like to think I'm so savvy that nothing in that Privacy document would surprise me. But I haven't really read the whole thing. It'd be a good class assignment to make students read the policies of major services and write down what they were most surprised by, just to get a sense of how technically savvy they are.
> Example
Whilst we currently don’t ask for a credit card during sign up, verifying your age through a small credit card transaction is one way to confirm that you meet our age requirements in case your account was disabled after you have entered a birthday indicating you are not old enough to have a Google Account.<p>Pay us some small amount so we can keep tracking you.