Is Google evil and intrusive?

I would like to follow up with your statement about what was in that article. I was searching for some obscure song earlier, a weird joke metal track that made me giggle like ten years ago (the long story doesn’t really matter here) and when I was doing my search in private, I managed to find it within a couple searches because Google’s intuition read me, even though I am using a private browsing session.

That’s scary good stuff. And I cannot deny the results. Even when searching for illegal things, Google will always put the results front-and-centre if it’s in the clearweb. Alphabet will cater to people who break the law and media corporations hate it but they also have YouTube, and Alphabet has media corpos by the horns because of YouTube, a loss leader who never achieved profitability but has such a large and synonymous presence with domestic clearweb video sharing, so to take it down would really be taking down an institution most people stand by.

Honestly I think if video sharing was limited to less popular websites like DailyMotion, MetaCafe, LiveLeak, Albino Black Sheep and eBaumsWorld there might be a strength in numbers thing for restoring net neutrality, but none of them bear the same weight as YouTube. Then you have Facebook and Facebook Video. Then you have other lesser-known, but still major outlets like Vimeo. And Twitch covers the gaming segment, which is now owned by Amazon. I am most certain if strong institutions that had been stalking us all this time on the Internet hadn’t existed, NN wouldn’t even be talked about. A web which treats traffic equally wouldn’t even be considered because a bunch of puny people whining about it wouldn’t have the same significance as big brother saying to big daddy But the people want their Internet cheap and easy!

While we know in the back of our minds they want it so more money goes to them, as Amazon by no means wants to punish people for Trump’s trade war tactics with his recent tariffs against China (as they ponder how their add-on items could be justified with a 25% markup) some of the big Internet corporations, while putting their best interests forward also double down on consumer protection because some government policies are outright punishing the end-user.

So I see it, at the end of the day as a game of give-and-take. You’re giving up privacy to help them, absolutely but these people stealing your privacy also give a damn about the health of the Internet because that’s their turf. They don’t want that messed with, and while we hate anti-privacy tactics, we should be supportive of their efforts to ensure the Internet at large continues to be a place for information to be distributed freely.

Those we talk about already know they do evil things which is why they don’t bother to censor us, but like us they don’t want to spend more money on the platform we share with them.

Every time I try to use Firefox I end up googling how to use it. Adding bookmarks? Nightmare. Everything seems to be so convoluted compared to chrome.

And gmail is awesome.

I might not approve of Google’s ethics but what they do, they do well.

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What I don’t get is why everyone seems to follow the market brainwashing and say “Google it”, or “I just Googled it”, or “ask Google”. It’s called ‘assimilation’. You and otehrs have been assimilated - kneaded through media and rhetoric to advertise for them with “googling it”. There are hundreds of search engines, some for specific purposes. Googles purpose of course is to assimilate your privacy, while the others also, except for a very few, want to get to know you too. Why Google it? Why not use your own mind and say what it is “Search it”?

Are you paid to advertise for Google? Of course you are! There is an exchange; your privacy for search results - sorry, I guess I should say Google results. You pay them with your privacy for the privilege of looking through it’s catalogue.

Results are more often than not just catering to the profile Google has of you. Try to have that profile removed - you can’t. It’s about you but not yours - it’s theirs. Therein lay the big issue of what part of You is not yours! By the way, when was the last time Google or Bing or the others paid you royalties for the ads you saw that were based on ‘all about you’?

Just had to chime in… my bad :slight_smile:
i.

Where did YOU read that it’s all wrong? Just curious. i.

No problem. And I guess you could certainly argue that the fact that ‘to google sth’ is a valid verb (it’s in all the major dictionaries and as a writer I know I can use this term - with a small ‘g’ - without asking for copyright permissions) is endemic of the problem.

I have, I guess, rather limited experience of browswers (Bing, Ask, Yahoo, AO) but in my experience they are all vastly inferior to Google. And, as I spend half my day researching online it’s become, if you like, a necessary evil.

Regards.

I want to rebut that statement. Mozilla Firefox isn’t a bad browser, though if someone were to mention the brand and browser itself is being mismanaged I would agree with my whole heart about that. Firefox really feels irrelevant to me since they gave up what made them unique in favour of going with the crowd, and I had threatened multiple times over of going away from Firefox in favour for Chrome.

…That is, until I heard about Vivaldi. And once a mobile browser is released to make their sync functionality meaningful in a day and age of mobile browsing then I’ll be more than fired up to tell people about it because Vivaldi will be worth giving a damn to everyone who doesn’t spend their life staring at a desktop PC all day. Does everything I want, has 2FA for sync and works with all of your favourite Chrome addons without giving your soul to Google.

I also could had went with Pale Moon as a browser if I wanted to keep all of my Gecko stuff compatible but I don’t see myself using that any time soon when Vivaldi does tab management right, in my opinion. And while there might be some interface options I could get with Firefox I miss, and while some features I use to have as Firefox addons are more “Basic” in their implementation, it’s good enough for 98% of users IMO, so if you want to find an alternative which isn’t bound by Google then check it out.

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try the brave browser with Duck Duck Go as the search engine, it is privacy respecting and Duck Duck go is becoming a pretty good search engine, I also do like and use vivaldi

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Thanks. I’ll check 'em out!

For private browsing, Vivaldi uses DDG by default. In its settings, Vivaldi can also use DDG for normal searches. Brave is nothing special in this regard.

@deanr72 can’t go wrong either way but I still stand by my commentary about its tab management which he may find favourable if he has 100+ tabs opened on the daily.

Yeah I just use both with ddg but brave for mobile

Hey idiot, when did you mention that?

Looking back on my comment I never mentioned about its tab management features directly, but scrolling up and reading previous posts can yield this information, as it’s all I had been obsessing about my first week of using it and participating in this community simultaneously.

In brief; No other browser on the planet does tab groups (“Stacks” as they are called) and multiple tab view (Tab tiling) like it does, at the moment. As more people check out and use Vivaldi, more browsers may incorporate their own flavour of tiles and stacks, and it can be better but it’s still 98% there. Work around its limitations and you have a hell of a browser, though stacks do not work like Firefox containers which requires invocation of new windows and tiles can’t be split dynamically, only statically between three configurations.

I know it’s an old reply, but “nothing more than the cost of your Internet connection.” has me worried, that you like so many others feel that our/your privacy has no value.

As ‘The Girl’ so eloquently put it in Anon, …" You invade my privacy, it’s nothing. I try to get it back, it’s a crime."

But my favourite throw-back to Googies accusing me of hiding something is …_“It’s not that I have something to hide. I have nothing I want you to see.”

Google may not charge a fee dollar-wise, but my Privacy has value and for Google, Bing, Yahoo and other of the ilk to suggest otherwise is a insult to everyone’s intelligence and to our inalienable right to privacy.

i.

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Can you convince your government that? How about your bank? Do you even keep your money in a bank or similar institution? Are you a citizen of your land or do you not participate in your province’s political duties because you are a non-citizen?

My point is, once your government has you, it’s over. As an American citizen, my government has me marked via means of a social security number. Similar in Canada they have their citizens marked via their social insurance number. In my state, I am given a citizenship card (“State identification”) even if I do not drive. Neither of these things apply if you are not a US or Canadian citizen, but if you interact with your bank you’re given a number of some description.

If you work with money, you exchange a little of your privacy if you use a debit or credit card, which can be tracked by your local government at will. They don’t have to tell you, they just have to suspect you’re involved in something they don’t like, or which does not benefit their people.

If you’re politically involved, you must have some kind of relationship to a government institution. To live in a city as a non-citizen is to be invisible and hardly acknowledged, being of equal regard to a homeless person, and with much less recourse if you are seeking assistance.

Someone has you at some capacity. You can say you fight for your freedom and privacy all you want but unless you affiliate with no one and do nothing with any government-ran or government-owned institution, you’re not free. You’re their slave, which is the worst fate you can have because at least when in anybody else’s machine online, you have the possibility of disconnecting yourself from it even if your data does linger for a few years afterward.

MAY-BEE this can help all you guys that feel your privacy is stolen from your governments and corporations like Google and Facebook etc etc etc.

Have a good read, the article is full of things you can do to get some of your privacy back.
Regards
SpacePunk.

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Good call. Also @SpacePunk I updated the PAEQ guide I have, and there’s some other info about using the LADSPA and FFT EQs alongside one another.

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And again TIOX your a STAR mannnnn.:grinning:

I hear everything you said and I get it. But Google (this topic) is NOT government, nor a bank, nor a Lord and Master. Neither is Bing, Amazon, Facebook, Youtube, CNN, Global, New York Times, any ‘Customer Loyalty’ nor or any of the other Stalkers that load up our computers with Big Bro’ Stalking tools.

Government stalkers is one thing. Google, the focus of this topic, is not a government but has and continues to act as if it owns the Internet and anyone using it is their citizens.

Anyone that says “Google it” won’t turn in to a garden gnome if they side-stepped Google’s brainwashing for a second and say “Search it” instead of advertising Google for Google.

Back to the part you quoted me (above). Just because the government and banks stalks us does NOT make it OK for Google and ilk who do NOT have the right to follow me.

Racial and sexual “profiling” is illegal, but it’s OK for Google and minions to profile us simply based on our Internet travels.

To go back to and respond to the original question in this topic, Yes, Google is Evil!

People built the Internet. Then business and commerce moved in and stole it away.

In comparison, a loose analogy that it use to be called “The Christmas holidays.” Business realized that there are 2.1 billion Christians. Advertisers said "But if we change it to “The Holidays” we can convince the 1.5 billion Muslims, 1.1 billion agnostics. 900 million Hindus and so on, to buy a “holiday gift”, “holiday tree” and celebrate “holiday gift giving” at a “holiday dinner” surrounded by “holiday decorations”. And the world has fallen for it.

Of course dumping Christmas to be replaced by “the holidays” isn’t happening overnight, but it takes brainwashing through advertising to only one generation to have a winning effect in only a few short years. They are almost done drying up youths brain cells. Google has done the same with the Internet. The “Information Highway” is now the Google catalogue of everything they want us to see.

Corporate Greed stole Christmas. Google-Greed stole the Internet and my right to privacy.

i

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@SpacePunk
Why should we have to do anything to circumvent Internet Stalkers like Google stalkers, Bing, FB, and minions of that ilk? Who made it a ‘opt-out’ instead of an ‘opt-in’? Why is “opt-out” so laboriously complex and time consuming?

I won’t speak for everyone, but I feel, as one of the “guys” you refer to that my privacy is not for sale. Google and ilk have the approach that our privacy is free for the taking. It is NOT. Never was, never should be.

i.

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Take a wild guess why. It disheartens me to say this, but the people behind it are evil. They are complicit in evil, even to much of their chagrin. Those who actively work in evil act in kind.

If we’re going to take this conversation down to the metal for exposure of what it really is, Google is like any other billion-dollar company who made it big and is now a noun people say for an action, much like if you want to clean your nose you use a Kleenex. (Ever heard anyone say to take a Puffs? Yeah, thought so.)

People both crave and are craven of power. The majority are indifferent because they live in the same systems we’ve been talking about. People rely on Google for their financial success, and exploit its own users to continue their success as they’d rather sacrifice integrity for their shareholders… of which they also use to succeed with by profiling them. Google won by being evil, and people allowed it because they too are evil.

If Excite had their marbles straight, we’d most likely be talking about how either search is still in the dark ages or if they became similar to Google, we’d need to quit saying to “Excite it”. They would had fallen prey to the same traps Google as a more pure and kindly entity had and become the very thing we’re talking about now.

And here's what I think about the holidays.About your silly generational brainwashing aside of "The holidays", I think the holidays sums up pretty well American Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, as well Divali, Kwanzaa and Hanukkah. Humanity celebrates so similarly, and it's inoffensive if you don't know what one's ethnic belief is. A way to be nice without offending by accident because one slip of the tongue in certain locales and evil people will intervene with violence because that's the kind of world we live in.
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Here is a court of law uttering in an adult entertainment case the phrase Google at your own risk.

(Video because I fingered out how to upload with a player embed)

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