"Privacy is not something that can be counted, divided, or ‘traded.’ It is not a substance or collection of data points. It’s just a word that we clumsily use to stand in for a wide array of values and practices that influence how we manage our reputations in various contexts. There is no formula for assessing it: I can’t give Google three of my privacy points in exchange for 10 percent better service."
Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything: And Why We Should Worry (Berkeley: U of California P, 2011), pp. 87f. Quoted in James Gleick, “How Google Dominates Us,” The New York Review of Books 58.13 (August 18, 2011).
