> you are not going to convince me that the authors of all that software are siphoning data out of us all for nothing.
That's not what they are saying at all, and suggesting it's for nothing proves you don't understand the value of using the data for internal decision making. Simply put: the main use of this data is for that reason: internal decision making. Answering questions like:
* How are our customers using our products?
* What errors are they experiencing?
* What features are they using?
* Where are they confused?
* What features cause the most problems?
* What feature should we work on next?
These are all regular questions that are answered by collecting these types of metrics, including the one described in this post. Selling the data to third parties isn't easy. The data is generally gathered to inform product decisions, not to sell, so it's not in any easy format that makes it easy to sell. One has to go out of their way to sell this data, and the cost to put together this data in a way that's useful to sell would almost certainly cost more to setup and manage than they would get from such a small number of relative users.
The simple fact is, everyone sends data back to their servers for collecting and parsing, including Apple, the company everyone puts on a pedestal for privacy.
Simply put: show me the evidence they are selling the data to third parties for profit. Anything less is speculation.
That's not what they are saying at all, and suggesting it's for nothing proves you don't understand the value of using the data for internal decision making. Simply put: the main use of this data is for that reason: internal decision making. Answering questions like:
* How are our customers using our products? * What errors are they experiencing? * What features are they using? * Where are they confused? * What features cause the most problems? * What feature should we work on next?
These are all regular questions that are answered by collecting these types of metrics, including the one described in this post. Selling the data to third parties isn't easy. The data is generally gathered to inform product decisions, not to sell, so it's not in any easy format that makes it easy to sell. One has to go out of their way to sell this data, and the cost to put together this data in a way that's useful to sell would almost certainly cost more to setup and manage than they would get from such a small number of relative users.
The simple fact is, everyone sends data back to their servers for collecting and parsing, including Apple, the company everyone puts on a pedestal for privacy.
Simply put: show me the evidence they are selling the data to third parties for profit. Anything less is speculation.