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.
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.
at least they have done something for open source, something you and I can modify and maybe even turn it into a privacy-oriented browser. even android has custom roms, what matters is what can be done with the source code! And by the way, I am not dominated, because I use duckduckgo and open source software.
The bad thing is, I don’t think you even need to use it to be dominated. Google uses their 70% market share to push things like the Web Integrity API or new fingerprinting methods whether you use it or not. Diversity get’s thrown under the bus anyways. I’ve had a bit of a look at WebRTC during the videoconferencing times. It mainly matters what codecs Safari and Chrome implement these days.
Whatever messenging app your friends have preinstalled dictates if you can videocall them.
And their gmail account if the mails from your open source mailserver get accepted or just dumped into the spam folder.
I also use Android and have a Chromium based browser ready. I’m somewhat okay with it. But I don’t think that changes anything in the broader, global picture.
It affects me. I have to use Meta’s messenger instead of having an open and interoperable solution if I want to stay in contact with my friends. I can’t participate in contactless payments with my phone or rent those stupid e-scooters. My online banking app works, but I’m not sure if I could for example charge an electric car without a smartphone that has Google Services installed.
And I think a big tech company can’t buy their way out of something by also giving away a few open source things. The projects might be nice and usable and lead by smaller and distinct teams. But it doesn’t really make me like the company as a whole if 95% of their business is something else.