Google is launching more and more "privacy" products. But do these really benefit the privacy of users?

Google started out with a “don’t be evil” motto when it launched its first product, Google Search. Today, Google is a different company. It has created numerous products and abandoned a lot.

  • Knusper@feddit.deEnglish
    21·
    1 year ago

    Yeah, it annoys me to no end. First, they tried to convince the industry that users don’t want privacy, they want security, because somehow privacy would not be just one discipline underneath security.
    And now that privacy has won, that even lawmakers have understood that it’s something that users need and should be able to demand, now they’re completely flipping their messaging on its head. Suddenly, they’re all about privacy. Except, of course, that they’re fucking lying.

    • namingthingsiseasy@programming.devEnglish
      10·
      1 year ago

      The only solution is to break them up. There is no other way - Google will keep perverting and manipulating social trends as long as they’re allowed to hold onto their position.

      The web browser is the most important piece of software in the world. It should not be under the control of a single company - especially when that company is a massive monopolist with extreme conflicts of interest.

      The web (and the entire internet) was built on standards. It is time to go back to multiple parties working together on standards. Not a single, monopolistic implementation.

      (Google isn’t the only company that needs to be broken up by the way, but they’re definitely the most urgent.)

      • ImTryingLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        31·
        1 year ago

        Take the IP Protection “feature”. They hide your IP address from individual sites while hoovering up all of the user’s data into their own servers, to use for their own ends.

        Privacy hasn’t been enhanced, if anything it’s been weakened by giving one company a log of everything done through the browser. So, it’s a fucking lie

      • Knusper@feddit.deEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Well, with that proxying feature, I mostly meant that they’re not doing it for the privacy, but rather for those other benefits.
        Much like with 8.8.8.8 for DNS and AMP for the server-side, this feature locks down the client-side, ensuring that internet traffic goes over their infrastructure.

        Yes, user privacy is short-term somewhat improved, because their competitors can’t track you quite as easily anymore, but if they truly cared about improving privacy/security, there would be so many much lower hanging fruits they could pick, like end-to-end-encryption for Chrome Sync by default. They don’t pick those, because it would impact their own ability to invade user privacy.