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Google Chrome has become surveillance software. It’s time to switch
- eitland 7y agoIsn't this just a copy from Washington Post or something? Not that bashing Chrome or Googme bothers me, I made my own attempt at that recently, but no need to discuss the same article twice?
- cheschire 7y agoYep. Was posted yesterday[0] which was marked a dupe from the original washpo article[1] also posted a day ago. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20247077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20247077 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20243473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20243473
- pyman 7y agoArticle behind paywall. Please stop doing this.
- demxzy 7y agoI don't think everyone reads wapo and many probably missed the previous time it was discussed.
- jasonvorhe 7y agoIsn't this trope getting a bit redundant? It's like Gmail ca 2012 all over again. Chrome is free software, you're not being forced to use it, there are alternatives, the most relevant ones are even using the same engine. It's like everyone is trying to capture some unique visitors because they know it works: $service is spying on you.
- robertAngst 7y agoIs this a massive advertisement campaign by googles competitors? It seems these privacy concerns are particularly anti-google. Seems weird, given there arent many companies that made my life significantly better for 0$/yr.
- algesten 7y agoit's interesting how many people think paying with your privacy costs nothing.
- Barrin92 7y agocompletely serious question, what does it cost me? It's not like my data is some zero sum thing that vanishes once someone else has it, and it's not like I have the ability to directly sell it to anyone else. How in material terms am I worse off by anyone tracking me. Isn't this all just entire ideological, I don't see what cost I incur if Google knows that I visited hackernews, listen to bowie on youtube and like podcasts
- feanaro 7y agoGoogle and a few other gigantic corporations are clearly aiming for a much larger power grab in the future, with their own money, hardware, complete control of the software stack, the web, messaging, transport, etc. In this future, a corporation becomes indistinguishable from a government and this is the long term cost. It's hard to see if you're only paying attention to immediate cost on the scale of a year or few.
- fromthestart 7y agoThe cost is the risk of someone using your data against you in the future, against your will. For example, even seemingly benign page visits, like apolitical YouTube videos and shopping data can probably be combined with location history to infer political affiliation with good accuracy with some basic machine learning. That kind of data only needs to be collected once, and it's out there forever. Now imagine the wrong authoritarian party gains access to such data in 5 or 10 years, and now knows that you've spent your life going to church and watching gun videos, or that you visited a planned Parenthood clinic and listened to a strongly liberal artist.
- the_duke 7y agoThe clue is in the title: It’s time to switch. > the most relevant ones are even using the same engine Firefox is very relevant.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ricardbejarano 7y agoI was starting to think I was the only one against these claims. There's no one pushing Google down its users' throats. Yet people ask Google to behave like they want. Well, surprise! Google is a private entity and they'll do whatever they want. If you don't like it, leave. I left a long time ago but I believe these claims are unfair to Google. We are being bombarded with "Google's x product is a monopoly". No they are not. There are tons of alternatives to anyone of Google's services. The thing is, they do it better than their alternatives. Free market, my friend. If x alternative to a Google's service gets better, people will gravitate towards it. But don't ask people to drop the better product in order to give (undeserved) attention to the not-so-great one. Earn it! People also complain about Google making their services' sites suck on other browsers. Well, their site, their rules. Not so long ago all online services had dedicated clients instead of web apps. Those apps weren't called "monopolies", yet there was no alternative client. Because the root of the monopoly argument lies in the "service", if there are no alternatives to the "service", now we are talking, but there's no monopoly in the "client". If you don't like the "client", drop the service.
- feanaro 7y agoUnfortunately, your narrative fails due to the existence of standards and governments. Having a large enough market share and capital allows you to manipulate both to your advantage.
- feanaro 7y agoYes, you're not forced to use it so well-meaning advice to stop using it is welcome. Also, Google isn't exactly a randomly sampled spying $service. It is probably one of top two offenders in this regard.
- hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago> Chrome is free software, Chrome might be provided without cost but it is certainly not free software. It is proprietary.
- ZuLuuuuuu 7y agoThe word "free" has two meanings, he/she obviously meant it free as in free beer.
- hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago"Free software" has a very distinct meaning.
- vetinari 7y ago> Chrome is free software When did that happen? Chromium is free software. Chrome isn't, by any stretch of imagination.
- rendall 7y agoWhen Chrome blocks ad-blockers as Google intends to do soon, I will entirely drop Chrome. And likely all of their services, as well: in for a penny, in for a pound.
- muppetman 7y agoYup. I've already moved to Firefox, using containers, ublock origin and auto-cookie-clear. Also moved away from Google to DDG. I HATE the stupid name, it's slow, and sometimes I still have to use the !g thing, but overall it's decent.
- robin_reala 7y agoGoogle was a stupid name too (a deliberately misspelled googol) but hey, it stuck and people are used to it now.
- alexanderdmitri 7y agoNot only are they used to it, it's been added into the English dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/google https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/googl...
- lou1306 7y agoBut DuckDuckGo just doesn't roll off your tongue, does it? Brand names are totally allowed to be stupid, as long as they're pronounceable.
- kumarharsh 7y agoWhy do you care what it's named? Set it as the default search engine, and just type your query in the address bar and you'll get the results. In fact whatever you typed in duckduckgo's search field can be typed directly in the browser address bar (including switches like !g or !im) Or if you use it frequently, just type 'd' and it'll be the first result. As for the name, I call it DDG, which is also what I call David de Gea :-)
- retrac98 7y agoThe irony of being prevented from reading this article because the site “sees you’re using an ad blocker”....
- suyash 7y agoBest of the lot is Safari if you are on an Apple device.
- retrac98 7y agoI don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. It’s slow to adopt new standards and a pain to develop for, but as a bit of consumer software it’s the best browser out there IMO.
- dwb 7y agoAnd by far and away the most energy efficient, which is pretty relevant for most Apple devices. It's currently my main browser and has been for a while.
- The_rationalist 7y agoSource? That would be highly surprising.
- dwb 7y agoSource: me. It's not a small difference, it's literally hours of battery life – or at least was last time I compared. Why would you be surprised? Note, though, that my browsing habits are very messy – I habitually have a number of windows open, some with many tabs. So if you're a neater sort you may not notice the difference as much. Also I haven't tried the most recent versions of Chrome, but I assume I would have heard something if they'd gotten that much better.
- The_rationalist 7y agoYou're an interesting data point then. It's surprising because chromium has an order of magnitude more developers dedicated to optimizations. Webkit ~= 200K commits Blink ~= 800K commits
- vjcbe 7y ago>Our latest privacy experiment found Chrome ushered more than 11,000 tracker cookies into our browser — in a single week. Firefox doesn't support cookies or what? >Firefox isn’t perfect – it still defaults searches to Google and permits some other tracking. But it doesn’t share browsing data with Mozilla, which isn’t in the data-collection business. Much worse, it shares browsing data, including full URL history, with third parties. https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-in-firefox/ https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-i...
- tomger 7y ago> Support for Cliqz integrated functions in Firefox is ending. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/cliqz-recommendations-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/cliqz-recommendations-f...
- holri 7y ago> Much worse, it shares browsing data, including full URL history, with third parties Not on my Debian. Firefox is free software, the community can always work around bad ideas.
- evolve2k 7y agoDear Firefox implement tab to search already. Yes you can do ‘similar’ things with ! but it’s really not the same. So many Chrome users staying for this feature. Solve it already.
- freetonik 7y agoI forced myself to forget about this, but I agree, this feature is so easy, elegant and useful, I'm surprised none of the browsers (last time I checked) had implemented it except Chrome.
- Bakary 7y agoDoesn't Firefox show you relevant open tabs when you type in keywords in the address bar?
- butteroverflow 7y agoThey're probably talking about the other feature: choose/write the domain name in the search bar, press Tab, and if you have previously visited the site, and it implements the OpenSearch "standard", the search bar sends your input to the chosen site instead of the default search engine (Google or whatever).
- hrktb 7y agoI didn’t know what ‘tab to search’, for people like me this is the simple explaination I found: > For example, whether it's YouTube, Amazon, Wikipedia, or any other site with its own search function, all I have to do is start typing "yout," Chrome will automatically fill it out to youtube.com with an option to press Tab to automatically start searching youtube from the address bar. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1177556 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1177556 The workaround in firefox is described in the above page, and basically pre-saving sites as bookmarked search engines.
- user764743 7y agoOf course a browser made by the biggest tracking company in the world is surveillance software, what else would it be?
- chobeat 7y agoThis weekend I started my degoogling. Gmail and Chrome are gone. Let's see if I can survive for a week.
- keyle 7y agoWhat did you / can you replace Gmail with? I have pretty much 10 years of Gmail history.
- freetonik 7y agoI recommend Fastmail. I've switched to it from Gmail last year and have easily moved about 10 years or archives. There's an easy built in import tool.
- keyle 7y agoOk but what makes you trust Fastmail more than Gmail, while it's clearly advertised as a safe haven away from prying eyes?
- amelius 7y agoSee: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19942219#19942579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19942219#19942579
- dastx 7y agoFastmail's HQ is in Australia, and Australia's encryption law are dystopian. Make of this what you will.
- chobeat 7y agoProtonmail. From what I've understood, tutanota is better but I'm also a German resident and they are based in Germany, so better have a provider abroad than at home. I give you a precious bit of information than blew my mind: if you move to a new email, you don't have to nuke the previous one. You can still access it and lose nothing important. I had 10 years of history too and yesterday I had to lookup a receipt and I was like: "ah, it's all still there, the email apocalypse that I envisioned was all in my head".
- SE_Student 7y agoI wonder if the same applies to "Brave" ? (the browser built on top of chrome). I stopped using chrome for a while and have been using Brave.
- mcbits 7y agoBrave is built upon Electron, which is built upon Chromium (not Chrome). Electron and Chromium are both open source, unlike Chrome, although development is still concentrated in Google and GitHub/Microsoft. So I imagine it's fine unless something egregious happens with those projects and there isn't a strong enough community to maintain a clean fork.
- krn 7y ago> Brave is built upon Electron, which is built upon Chromium (not Chrome). Brave has been built directly upon Chromium since December 2018[1]. [1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3328781/brave-browser-goes-full-chromium-by-adopting-google-ui.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3328781/brave-browser-...
- mcbits 7y agoOops! I actually thought about double-checking that before writing it, but I vaguely remember reading some list of reasons why they had initially gone with Electron instead of Chromium, so I assumed it was still true.
- Fat_Thor 7y agoLast I check, Brave disables all of Google related services by default except for Safe Browsing, which check for malicious downloads and sites. Even search suggestion is turned off by default.
- firecall 7y agoBrendan Eich is against LGBT rights. For this reason I will never use Brave. Here's the first link from a search https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9tsg2h/i_didnt_know_that_brendan_stepped_down_as_mozilla/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9tsg2h/i_didnt_...
- euoia 7y agoIs there an alternative to Chrome’s profiles?
- xyzal 7y agoI am quite satisfied with Firefox's Multi-Account containers. As an added bonus, tabs associated with different containers can share the same Firefox window.
- okramcivokram 7y agoAlso, there's `firefox -P <profile>`.
- firecall 7y agoIt's not exactly the same though... I have clients where we access a Google account, which has access to Google services... it's like synching a whole Google eco system. Everything is staked on the Chrome login - Gmail, Analytics, Tag manager, password synch... It could be undone, but those frackers at Google make it so easy. And so much is built off of Gmail as the mail service.
- kumarharsh 7y agoGive the Firefox Containers a try - they are a far better experience than Chrome's profiles IMO. You can define multiple containers for different use cases or personas, and all the browsing and history and cookies from that persona stays within that container only. There is even a special Facebook container, which always opens Facebook in a separate container, so FB can't track you across different sites.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- seanlinmt 7y agoAnd if you don't want to switch, there are things like privacy badger[1] and ghostery[2]? Although, strangely Privacy Badger does not seem to mention their chrome extension[3]. [1] https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger [2] https://www.ghostery.com/ https://www.ghostery.com/ [3] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/privacy-badger/pkehgijcmpdhfbdbbnkijodmdjhbjlgp https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/privacy-badger/pke...
- dtroode 7y agoWrote a little note on the same day about switching to Firefox https://dev.to/dtroode/why-you-need-to-give-firefox-a-chance-5g5a https://dev.to/dtroode/why-you-need-to-give-firefox-a-chance... Hmm
- bla3 7y agoIt sounds like the author doesn't quite know how cookies work. It's great that Firefox does cookie blocking by default, but it's not like not doing that is chrome-only -- and it's not chrome that's setting all these cookies, it's the internet advertising business. It'd be more honest to write an article about Firefox breaking bad internet standards in the interest of the user, and another one about internet tracking being out of control. Chrome has issues, and it'd be good if it blocked more cookies by default, but the headline here is way overblown. The headline might even be apt with a different article! But it seems we all want to be believe the headline so much that we didn't read past it. Edit: the article this was duped into has a much better headline.
- amelius 7y agoAre Google Chrome's practices allowed by EU/GDPR?
- NeoBeum 7y agoI stopped using chrome when it started to mess with RAM
- karmakaze 7y agoI saw one of the other posts go by and briefly scanned it. On this occasion: * I immediately closed Chrome I was using to read the post, * unpinned Chrome from the dock leaving only Firefox, and reopened my page in FF. For some reason, the third time something clicked.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]