The privacy implications of using ChromeOS has always been horrible. You cannot use this OS to its fullest extent without signing in. And once you are signed in

The privacy implications of using ChromeOS has always been horrible. You cannot use this OS to its fullest extent without signing in. And once you are signed in, it tracks everything you do online. Even printing to your desktop printer routes the print request through the cloud first (where its recorded by Google) and then back down to your computer. (Google doesn't look at your documents when you print but they still know when you print and how often. They also record the print job title, which can reveal a lot about what you're printing, and the printer you have.[1]) Imagine if every time you saved a document in Microsoft Word or Apple Pages, a record of when you saved, and how much time you spent in the app was saved by Microsoft or Apple. Now imagine every app you run in the OS tracks your activity to some degree, and every website is tracked too. Imagine this wasn't anonymous either because you'd signed into the OS and your account has your name, your gender, your location, your date-of-birth and even your mobile phone number. In other words, some of your most private and personal details tied to your activity in the OS. No, this isn't a dystopian episode of Black Mirror, but real life. It's called ChromeOS and it's spread like wildfire in US schools. It should never have gained a foothold in Education without stronger privacy assurances and a guarantee of no tracking of students (who don't even have any choice in the matter). I'm just utterly baffled by the response of the tech community toward Google on the issue of privacy and data collection. There is a strong double standard. Microsoft and Facebook are, quite rightly, criticised and scrutinised over the amount and the degree of tracking they undertake. Meanwhile, Google, who capture unimaginably huge amounts of data on users, escapes any scrutiny. Assurances that the data is "anonymised" or aggregated are not enough. The sheer scale of the data collected, even in aggregated form, lets these companies interrogate the data in ways we simply can't imagine. I don't blame ordinary users for not fully understanding the privacy implications and the myriad and insidious ways they are tracked. But what excuse does the tech community have for giving Google a free pass on privacy and online tracking? [1] https://support.google.com/cloudprint/answer/2541843?hl=en&ref_topic=4456298 https://support.google.com/cloudprint/answer/2541843?hl=en&r...