<story><title>Google&apos;s software mistreats or harms the user</title><url>https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-google.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>whatshisface</author><text>If you come at it from the perspective that Google is your friend, as in not like a real friend (who I wouldn&amp;#x27;t let change my passwords), but a friend that&amp;#x27;s even better than a real friend, then sure, these points are paranoid. The GNU perspective is very distrustful of the idea that anyone else should be administrating their devices, and refuses to trust any corporation more than they would a friend.</text></item><item><author>Ajedi32</author><text>Almost all of this is heavily exaggerated, presenting relatively innocuous features as if they were harmful, or calling out simple bugs as if they were intentional and actively malicious. None of it is flat-out wrong per-se (at least as far as I can tell), and I can certainly see where GNU is coming from, but I think for the average user most of the features they&amp;#x27;re criticizing actually do a lot more good than harm.&lt;p&gt;Just a few examples, to demonstrate my point:&lt;p&gt;- They describe Google&amp;#x27;s demonstrated ability to remove malware from user&amp;#x27;s devices as a &amp;quot;backdoor&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- They describe parental controls as &amp;quot;censorship&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- They consider the fact that Android supports DRM &amp;quot;malware&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- They cite the fact that Android malware exists as a security flaw. (Ignoring the fact that there is basically no OS in existence that &lt;i&gt;can&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; be infected with malware.)&lt;p&gt;- They consider the ability for users to remotely reset their Android lockscreen combo if they know their Google account password a &amp;quot;back door&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- They describe a bug where Google Assistant incorrectly identified the &amp;quot;Okay Google&amp;quot; hotword as &amp;quot;Google Assistant recording users&amp;#x27; conversations&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- They describe the fact that a Google message app doesn&amp;#x27;t delete conversations until the user asks it to as &amp;quot;surveillance&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Again, I&amp;#x27;m not saying this point of view is necessarily wrong. From a certain point of view, all of the claims I described above are actually quite logical. (I even find myself agreeing with some of them.) But from the perspective of the average user, the vast majority of this stuff simply isn&amp;#x27;t worth worrying about, and I think it&amp;#x27;s a little extreme to characterize it as &amp;quot;malware&amp;quot;. Just something to keep in mind.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>henryfjordan</author><text>The GNU completely ignores the value that you get from Google. For instance this point:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Google Chrome contains a key logger that sends Google every URL typed in, one key at a time&lt;p&gt;They are describing the auto complete feature...&lt;p&gt;I get that people should be making informed choices about what data they share, but for the FSF to so intentionally mis-describe what is going on does not help inform anyone.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google&apos;s software mistreats or harms the user</title><url>https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-google.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>whatshisface</author><text>If you come at it from the perspective that Google is your friend, as in not like a real friend (who I wouldn&amp;#x27;t let change my passwords), but a friend that&amp;#x27;s even better than a real friend, then sure, these points are paranoid. The GNU perspective is very distrustful of the idea that anyone else should be administrating their devices, and refuses to trust any corporation more than they would a friend.</text></item><item><author>Ajedi32</author><text>Almost all of this is heavily exaggerated, presenting relatively innocuous features as if they were harmful, or calling out simple bugs as if they were intentional and actively malicious. None of it is flat-out wrong per-se (at least as far as I can tell), and I can certainly see where GNU is coming from, but I think for the average user most of the features they&amp;#x27;re criticizing actually do a lot more good than harm.&lt;p&gt;Just a few examples, to demonstrate my point:&lt;p&gt;- They describe Google&amp;#x27;s demonstrated ability to remove malware from user&amp;#x27;s devices as a &amp;quot;backdoor&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- They describe parental controls as &amp;quot;censorship&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- They consider the fact that Android supports DRM &amp;quot;malware&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- They cite the fact that Android malware exists as a security flaw. (Ignoring the fact that there is basically no OS in existence that &lt;i&gt;can&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; be infected with malware.)&lt;p&gt;- They consider the ability for users to remotely reset their Android lockscreen combo if they know their Google account password a &amp;quot;back door&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- They describe a bug where Google Assistant incorrectly identified the &amp;quot;Okay Google&amp;quot; hotword as &amp;quot;Google Assistant recording users&amp;#x27; conversations&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- They describe the fact that a Google message app doesn&amp;#x27;t delete conversations until the user asks it to as &amp;quot;surveillance&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Again, I&amp;#x27;m not saying this point of view is necessarily wrong. From a certain point of view, all of the claims I described above are actually quite logical. (I even find myself agreeing with some of them.) But from the perspective of the average user, the vast majority of this stuff simply isn&amp;#x27;t worth worrying about, and I think it&amp;#x27;s a little extreme to characterize it as &amp;quot;malware&amp;quot;. Just something to keep in mind.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>skybrian</author><text>Your &amp;quot;friend&amp;quot; analogy is basically the perspective of someone who wouldn&amp;#x27;t put their money in a bank. If you wouldn&amp;#x27;t trust a friend to hold thousands of dollars for you, why would you trust a bank?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s questionable whether Google deserves similar trust as a bank since they aren&amp;#x27;t regulated in a similar way. But it isn&amp;#x27;t unusual for people to trust companies over friends for some things, such as their life savings.&lt;p&gt;The other thing to remember is that trust can be partial. For example, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t trust a bank not to be looking for legal ways to charge me fees and I wouldn&amp;#x27;t trust their investment advice, but I&amp;#x27;d trust them to keep their ATM&amp;#x27;s working and not to lose my money.</text></comment>