Is Chrome a privacy atrocity? WaPo’s tech columnist, Geoffrey Fowler, poked into this and wrote an article about a year ago. He says it is.
Article includes links to some of his similar essays on the snooping behavior of other electronic devices we all love to hate.
If you see ads as attempts at manipulation (which it seems I and @Spiderman do) then targeted ads give them more information by which to be manipulative. They can know not only what products you might actually be interested in, but what sorts of things would appeal to you.
There are two things ads try to do: the first is to try and get you to buy the product right then, usually by trying to manufacture a “need” for the product. The other is just to make it where, when you do think about purchasing that particular type of product, you think of them first. Both are more likely to work if it’s about things you actually care about or are likely to ever buy. Having non-targeted ads means they’re much less effective at that.
I mean, we know ads work, or they wouldn’t keep using them. None of us are above the tricks they use. We can fall for them. I know that the reason I chose the specific online backup company I use is because it was advertised so often on a podcast I listen to, by a guy I trust with computers. I didn’t buy it right then, but it was the first company on my mind when I did.
Granted, looking around, that company seems to have been the best value, so I came out ahead. That’s why I think some people like targeted ads: they see the benefits outweighing the downsides.
I don’t. But I also do everything in my power to block nearly all ads. There are a few places where I let them go, but, when I do, I prefer them to be non-targeted.
Spending money itself is not a problem. But spending it where people who do not have your best interests want you to can be.
Ads use known and tested psychological tactics in order to influence what a person actually wants to purchase. They can even directly manufacture a need so they can then fulfill that need.
The only real value of ads of any kind is informing you that something exists. But that value in 2021 is quite low. When you have a problem or actual need, you are more likely to just search online. If you want something cool, you can specifically look for it. You don’t need to have these ads interrupting your entertainment or work.
In the few cases where I do allow ads, I don’t want them to catch my attention at all. I want them to be so completely off from what I want that they are unlikely to actually influence me.
I’d love to think that I am not susceptible to these sorts of pressures, but I know I am. Heck, even without ads, all the hype about 3D printers and the way it appealed to the science fiction part of my brain led to me buying a (relatively cheap but well-built) one with my stimulus money. And, yet, months later, I’ve still not used it. It’s not making me any happier or improving my life in any way.
That’s the general cycle in a capitalist system. No one cares if you actually are happier with what you buy, just as long as you keep buying. So it’s better to keep you not quite happy.
I want to limit that effect as much as I reasonably can.
Beautiful post overall. My sentiments exactly.
I would happily pay extra for 100% ad-free newspapers and magazines and television and www. When I discover a need in my life, I will go search out a solution. Meantime get your commercial speech out of my life.
I’ve also found his combination to be extremely effective. It’s strange when I do see an ad now. I also have HTTPS Everywhere, but it seems that FF can do that by itself now. I’m also big user of the FF multi-account container feature.
Strange comment, considering Edge, which is now based on Chromium, is basically a Chrome without memory hogging. It’s my browser of choice.
At some point Google was going to try to make some money 
. I think we are so used to the ‘free’ internet that we forgot to realize that those companies were going to try to make money through advertising.
It’s why, for example, the secure email services - Protonmail, Tutanota - have very limited free tiers and require payment for any advanced functions.
I guess I am remembering the old Edge which sucked hard. Never felt the need to try the new Edge.
Aye, Edge is an automatic removal for me on any new windows installations.
And Chrome has never affected my performance; but Edge’s UI is (was?) miserable.
LOL…same here.
On any new installation my very first thing to do is start Edge and then download Firefox and set it to the default browser (I also download Chrome and Opera). Edge icon gets deleted off the desktop after that.
(Ok…first thing I do is go to Ninite and get a lot of things at once including Chrome and Firefox and Opera…that site is a savior when building PCs.)
Y’all are missing out, but shrug, you do you.
Here’s a TechRadar listing, which has Edge at #2 after Firefox:
I worked for a corporation that moved to GDocs - you could have Office if your department paid for it, but IT just provided GDocs (millions cheaper than an Corporate Office subscription). And as part of the eval team…GDocs even back then (this was ten years ago) will do 100% of what 80% of all users need it to do. It will do 80% of what the other 20% of users need it to do. But you may have to make some compromises (our CIO was a picky Powerpoint guy - as in things needed to be in the right font with the right background - he got over it because it was literally millions per year in savings - you can get over a font preference).
And back then it was the only place where you could do the shared contemporary edits thing. That was cool.
I think if Microsoft improved MS-Word they’d be in consideration again.
If all someone wants to do is type a paper then GDocs is fine. But if you want to do some fancy formatting you need something more. Unfortunately, MS-Word has always been a nightmare when trying to do that. Ever try to place a picture in a MS-Word document? Have fun with that. It’s just horrible (move the picture a millimeter and all your text pops to the bottom and so on).
If MS could sort that out they might have something. That plus Excel (which I still think is the best spreadsheet program out there) would make it compelling. PowerPoint…meh. The other two can carry it though.
But yeah…80% (maybe 90%) of people only need what is offered for free in GDocs.
(I should give LibreOffice a look again…it has been a while.)
Possible minor hijack. I’ve noticed in the past week or two that whenever I click on the bookmark for my Gmail account while the page is loading it shows “Google Workspace” instead of “Gmail” like it used to. I haven’t noticed any change in the page that opens, or how I am able to access my mail. So I’m not sure exactly what’s happening, but as long as it doesn’t affect my ability to read my mail I’m not that concerned.
'Zactly.
One of the larger mistakes Microsoft made when they replaced the original in-housemade Edge with Chromium-based Edge is they forgot to rename the damn thing.
Lots of folks now hate a product they’ve never even tried as a result of that dumbness. I understand the face-saving MS was doing. But when you lay an egg, better to admit it, move on, and quietly bury the survivors.
Google Workspace is the new umbrella under which all Google productivity services operate; email, docs, calendar, et cetera.
Yeah, I’ve basically not used Edge since early days, because it was just SO bad that it soured me on the whole thing. If it’s an entirely different product now, I wouldn’t even know. Of course, the whole “Edge is the default app for ALL THE THINGS” attitude of MS pisses me off too, but that’s a personal failing.
Of course, I’m all in on Google, so won’t likely ever NOT use Chrome, but again, that’s a me thing.
(My house is all decked out with Chromecasts on all TVs, Google Home speakers in the rooms, Nest thermostats, and my whole digital movie library is all on Google TV…)
They are still taking shit about Clippy…
FWIW I use Edge. I was never really a Chrome user - it always seemed so bloaty to me, but I was a big Firefox fan. Then I started using Reddit and Reddit was hella slow on Firefox so I switched to Edge to see if that helped, and Windows was really pushing it. I’ve been using it for about a year now, on my desktop and phone, and I’m very pleased with it.
I do Web development and I’m on the desktop 8+ hours a day with 4-20 tabs open all day. It just hums along nicely. And it doesn’t have weird rendering problems like IE or Safari (thanks to being Chromium).
If you use the internet AT ALL, if you use your cell phone AT ALL, “they” are tracking you. I’m not sure even a VPN will get around that. You would have to go totally off grid, and even then, you are being tracked externally, there are webcams etc everywhere.
Yeah. I remember reading a report a few years ago where a reporter took several phones and disabled them in different ways, then enabled them again on a network that could track everything the phone was sending to see just how easy it was to avoid tracking.
One phone was switched off. Another was put into airplane mode. Another was switched off and the SIM card pulled. Then the guy went around town into various businesses for the day.
Later, he enabled all the phones on their monitored network. Every one of them then uploaded all locations the phone had been that day. So even switching off a phone and pulling the SIM card won’t save you from location tracking - it’ll just delay the data dump.