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.

  • atro_city@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m not sure where you were during the time of the Snowden revelations, but I invite you to look it up.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_disclosures

    A few things to go down the rabbit hole on:

    Basically, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and host of other American companies collect a lot of information about citizens. So much in fact that the US government decided it was good to have access to it. That, and many other things, were revealed by Snowden and other patriots.

    The information has been sold to insurance companies to modify their premium for certain groups of the population. It is used to profile minorities, track activists, intimidate political opponents, fund wars abroad, and so much more. It even affects how people vote, which means that companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter have tangible influence on elections.
    When the Nazis invaded countries, they used the information gathered by governments to find the Jews, and we know what happened afterwards. It was Jews then, but what if you happen to be the group targeted in the next upheaval?

    Google (and companies like it), also like to use their power to snuff out competition which slows down innovation.

    Black and white

    The world isn’t black and white. Google does amazing things, good things, but it also does many bad things. For those who care, the bad things outweigh the good. It’s like drug cartels in Brazil, Colombia, and other countries: they build schools, enforce their own laws, invest in infrastructure, have political candidates, and sometimes even a form of democracy, but in the background, they violently murder rivals, fight fierce battles with law enforcement, assassinate political opponents, facilitate addiction, employ children and teens, and so much more.
    If you didn’t know about the bad things drug cartels do, would you support them and love them like you do Google?