That phrasing raises my weasel-word hackles… first of all, it’s unclear what it would mean to “use your photos and videos for advertising.” That sounds to me like reprinting your photos to advertise something—which nobody accused them of doing.

Perhaps more importantly, it only mentions the photos and videos themselves in relation to the advertising. Analyzing the photos (as per the demo in TFA) isn’t “advertising,” and neither is building a user profile.

Then later on, when they use that user profile to allow others to advertise to the user—that’s not “using your photos or videos for advertising” either. Nor is it “selling your personal information to anyone,” since what they’re selling is access to you instead of selling specific personal dossiers.

From where I’m sitting, that still seems to leave the door open to Google itself using what it gleans from your photos to build out your profile, use those insights across their whole company, and target ads at you. It also seems to leave the door open to selling “depersonalized” analyses to third parties, not to mention giving free access to whoever it might see fit (research groups, state actors,…), no?

There’s also a big difference between “doesn’t” and “will never.” Once an analysis with value exists, it seems counter to the forces of nature and commerce for it not to find its way out eventually. Just as the consumer DNA-sequencing firms pinky-swore everything was private, then gradually started spreading people’s genomes farther and wider.

Weasely indeed. They must list what they do, not what they don't.

It’s as weaselly as the wording where they say things like “we use your data to improve our services, eg. personalised advertising. To opt out of personalised advertising […]”

Nowhere does it say they stop using your data.

And it states something very obvious that you seem to have overlooked:

""Google Photos doesn't sell your photos, videos, or personal information..."

This says that they "don't", it very clearly does not say they " won't".

It feels just as weaselly to me when, by use of confidence-inspiring “plain language,” firms manage to pass off the impression that they’re making Solemn Categorical Pledges foreswearing the bad behavior that made users nervous—while preserving almost entirely the substance of the bad behavior.

Google seems especially invested in that kind of stunt. Remember their “ad privacy” consent screens for Chrome—which, ridiculously, framed consent to additional tracking as a “privacy” measure? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37427227; Aug 2023 / 974 points / 557 comments)

Twitter also said they would not use 2FA phone numbers for advertising purposes... and yet ended up doing it.

More to the point, when Google sought approval to buy DoubleClick, they testified before congress that they would not merge information gleaned from your use of Google services with your advertising profile.

If their CEO's congressional testimony on this point isn't considered binding at Google, verbiage on their website certainly isn't.

> To assuage concerns, Google told Congress and the FTC that it would not combine the user data it got from assets in search, e-mail, or GPS maps with information from DoubleClick about which consumers visited which publications. And so, the acquisition was greenlighted. Ten years later, though, Google did not hesitate to break its promise.

https://www.techpolicy.press/how-us-history-and-googles-own-...

Couldn't they argue that they use a description of what is on the photos and not the photos?

And why should I believe that? There's no reason for them not to lie and go and do whatever they want.

Right. They give away your photos, videos and personal information,and others might use them for advertising.

To who?

To the people that pay them money; consumers for the advertising business they run.

Neither of those statements would prevent them from updating your advertising profile with information their AI gleans from your photos.

The question of how you opt out of that remains.