i don’t want to offend anyone, but some open source/privacy enthusiasts dislike google, but why?? google has made chromium, android, etc and most of the things they do are open source, and not only that, they also support creative commons media or public domain. i know the privacy concernes they may have, but they would never do anything bad to you. i love google personally because of their commitment to open source software.

  • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
    2·
    1 year ago

    One more thing concerning the ‘open source’. Most things Google does aren’t open.

    You mentioned Chromium. I don’t think it would have become the most used browser platform if it hadn’t been open. So I’m not sure if it’s a gift or marketing decision. They kinda use it to spy on people/track behaviour. And push the web-standards they like. It’s part of their strategy to retain control over every part along the way and dominate the internet. From servers, to network infrastructure to the end users device and even their software that displays the webpages.

    With Android they take extra care to move more and more things into their propretary Google Services. I think the Calendar is kinda unmaintained, the ASOP keyboard is very bare. Half the Apps don’t work without Play Services, Push Notifications are an important part of todays world but proprietary. The camera doesn’t even have half it’s capabilities and the Play Store is set to assert control over the ecosystem. Contactless Payment doesn’t work with open source, …

    With Google, their open source always comes with strings attached. They’re not doing it for your benefit.

    If you compare it for example with Meta, they just give away PyTorch, React and their Llama2 models because they can and it’ beneficial to them. I don’t see too many strings attached there.

    But Google has a few of those, too. TensorFlow, Kubernetes, Gerrit, Angular and the two or three programming languages.

    If you like being dominated and the future of the web being shaped for you by a single company, or your wants and needs align well with their motives, I don’t have any objections, though.