Chromium is open-source. Chrome is not and also happens to constitute a majority of the browser market, and Google has tried multiple times to cash in on this market share to benefit their primary business of advertising to the detriment of users (FLoC, Manifest v3, Web Environment Integrity).
Likewise, AOSP is open-source, but Google has been progressively dismantling it and making various components closed-source (most recently the dialer app).
All this to say, Google is absolutely not friendly to FOSS. As a corporation, they’re beholden to their shareholders above all else and they should be treated as an amoral entity, the same as every other publicly-traded company.
google isn’t amoral , i’m sorry but, what about the google employees who use debian?? or who use krita?? those people are changing the environment!! and the only case in which they can be seen as amoral, is when they are asked for data to the government.
I’m sure they have some Firefox users too. It’s going to take a lot more than a few employees using Linux to convince me they wouldn’t steal both of my kidneys and leave me in an icy hotel bathtub.
Public companies are by definition amoral. They’re beholden to their shareholders and virtually every decision they make is informed by this obligation. Morality generally only factors into their decision-making insofar as it affects PR and thus the bottom line.
I don’t mean to say that Google or any other company is immoral. I use amoral to simply mean that they operate independent of morality. No public company, no matter how much you may like them, is your friend at the end of the day.
Chrome itself isn’t the real problem, how they managed to get Chromium everywhere is. You have one real alternative and that’s Firefox (and derivatives) and it’s barely surviving, which sucks.
Sure, they might not get as much money directly from non-Chrome browsers, but they get to push standards through Chromium.
Because they are above all else an advertising company. Businesses like having somewhere to advertise, of course… but overall consumers don’t like ads. Chrome, Android and gmail are simply ways to steer people to google search so they can sell ads. Then, like Facebook, their bread and butter is essentially privacy invasion - gathering huge dossiers of personal information on everyone they can. Google also has a reputation for being somewhat arrogant, as far as their work culture (only hiring people from elite universities, and having ridiculous ‘clever’ interview questions) as well as launching products, getting people to depend on them, then cancelling them with little notice or replacement. In addition, while their main product was innovative for the first several years, it’s declined significantly in quality, but their near-monopoly status makes it difficult for anyone else to effectively compete. Another issue is that like Facebook, Google has basically no customer service for anyone not spending 5 million a month with them. If they decide to close down your account based on who-knows-what algorithm thing, unless you get lucky on social media or have good connections, you’re screwed and all your stuff is permanently deleted.
yes but they do it legally and only what you type in the internet while you are connected to a google account, and maybe your contacts but that is up to you!! you have the freedom to limit how much data google uses!! and i personally like it because the algorithm recommends me good linux products.
One of the main priorities of the google maps cars is to also map wireless networks, so when your phone locates a wireless network, Google also knows your location (and the location of those connected to said network).
Note: This is also done passively by Android phones.
"Legal" doesn't immediately mean "moral". Everything is legal as long as there isn't a law specifically banning it, and those laws often only get created as a result of someone abusing their legal right to something.
Google collects also way more data than you pointed out, in every avenue possible. Ever solved a captcha? You likely helped Google train their image recognition AI. Got an android smartphone (a brand that previously had committed itself to being open-source and linux based)? Have fun with pre-installed unremovable Google Spyware. You're forced to create a GMail account to interact with the whole App ecosystem of the market.
Google can remotely (without your consent) download and delete apps on your smartphone, read your personal data (including stuff you have saved on your SD card) and accesses your camera, pictures and GPS-Data regularly.
I just read an article to prepare for writing this comment and feel actually sick now, I wanna jump ship and get an independent OS, screw the AppStore...
funny thing is, a guy i went to jr high with (in calgary) ‘invented’ a program called bumptop. a few years later, the guy sold everything to google for a nice sum, and got a job. next android update…was basically bumptop. seems hes still doing well for himself, colour me a bit jealous lol
Personally Google gives me a negative impression due to its intrusiveness and current aim of hoovering up all data possible. While you seem certain Google would never hurt you, there are many people who would never take such a risk. Even if Google was purely good of heart (which I doubt), they have proven themselves subjects to Government whims. A recent example is here: theregister.com/…/google_keyword_search_warrants/ where a court in the United States ordered Google to return personally identifying information on any and all users who searched for the address of a crime in the month prior. And their commitment to open source is debatable as shown by their graveyard of projects (killedbygoogle.com) often killed with strong usage and with dubious explanations really has strong Embrace, Extend, Extinguish vibes.
i know those criticisms. but while they do end the life of some services, they mostly do it to merge other services or make them better. and by the way, their main open source projects haven’t been ended, so that means something.
There are some, myself included, who believe many of the “mainstream” projects are only open to avoid antitrust lawsuits in America. The reason why there is chromium vs chrome and AOSP Android vs Google Android, is to take advantage of the confusion to make it sound as if the actual Google product is open source, where as the Google product is based upon the open source project. This makes it sound like anybody could copy Google’s product and give them a run for their money, which is obviously not the case.
Is a fart the gas itself, or the passing of the gas? The definition says it is the passing of the gas. Therefore, a fart isn’t a fart until it’s been farted. Before that, it’s just gas in the ass.
In 2019, Google agreed to pay $170 million to settle claims by the FTC and New York Attorney General that YouTube illegally collected personal information from children without their parents’ consent, the suit noted. Last year, a French high court upheld a 50 million Euro fine against Google over alleged failure to obtain users’ consent for using their data for ad targeting, the suit said.
well, with all blog articles, not everything has to be taken literally, maybe sometimes it’s just criticism or a misunderstanding. for example breaching user security, yes they did it, but for the safety of other people, so i’m sorry.
Because their core product - search, now sucks. Why? Page 1 is mostly ads. Compared to other search tools they are a much poorer user experience. Hell even Bing is better. They push their Bing chat based engine but you know what? It does a pretty good job without destroying what I came to do with the tool which is search for stuff.
duckduckgo search is certainly not open source.
Chrome also isnt open-source.
Chromium is, but Google mainly uses it to gain size and push standards that benefit them.
Instead there are other companies that you can also invest on to earn profits depending on your deposited investment,i do withdraw my profit weekly which has been working for me till date
Yeah , I am very well good in accessing accounts mostly social media accounts although there are different methods we work with in regards to access an account,it all depends on how tight the security is .
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