Just pointing out that windows and Mac collect comparable amounts of personal information, especially if you want to use their app stores.
Oh, and Ubuntu siphons data to Amazon.
So - if you really want no one snooping around by default, you should be on a more obscure Linux distro, that so devs don't support out of the box. For instance, one can find a Spotify app for Ubuntu/Debain, but you'll have to struggle on ArchLinux, or Suse
I made a separate account for the Chromebook. I don't associate any personal info with this account. Of course, most people will reuse their existing accounts, but it's not strictly required to provide personal details in order to use a Chromebook.
Do you have an example of when your were personally attacked with you private data by Google? If you're going to say ads in general, you know targeting can be disabled? I see all this constant distrust towards Google, but they're probably the best example of keeping your data secure. (According to market share) 99% of people are running an OS that collects some amount of telemetry data about them already, but Chrome OS, with a <1% market share is the real offender? People are less vocal about companies that actually lose your data, like Equifax, Facebook, and even Canonical had a data breach. I know it's fun to pick on the biggest players, but mid size and small companies have atrocious security practices that are actually abused.
It's naive to think the data that is collected about you is harmless if it is secure.
Standard economic theory suggests that precise knowledge about your properties and preferences will, in the future, allow firms to extract the maximum profit from you, to your detriment.
Google is already heavily investing the health sector, for example.
Not only does Google have a lot of broad data associated with your person, for example, any symptoms of disease you ever plugged into search, but we are also talking about an OS, which has absolute supremacy about anything you do on that computer.
That is why we should care, and that is why a comparision even to amazon or facebook is not accurate here. In this particular case, the breadth and depth of the possibilities to get data about you are unusual.
And keep in mind we are arguing about an OS that is technically not even open-source.
Privacy is not just some vague 'great to have' value. The opposite of privacy is surveillance, which democracy by its very definition excludes, but happens to be a key feature of totalitarianism.
Everyone knows the consequences of surveillance, there is no need to wait for consequences to be concerned. The casual disregard and lack of appreciation of the values that make modern societies possible is concerning.
Hand waving away surveillance infrastructure and seeking to normalize invasive surveillance is in the interest of companies like Google who profit from it, but for citizens to be blase suggests a reckless disregard of historical record and the societies they live in.
It still sounds like something I’d not be interested in: having to be so defensive around the os. Apps are already annoying, but if you can’t trust the OS itself, then why bother with it at all?
That's the reality I feel every time I boot into Windows to be honest. I work at Google so I am definitely biased but candidly those OneDrive ads in Explorer pissed me off pretty badly, as does start menu ads, Cortana notifications, automatically installing Candy Crush, and so many other things. You can disable most of that, but then I hear there's still telemetry getting sent back to MSFT even after you disable every tickbox in site.
Of course, the obvious solution is to run a good Linux distro or OpenBSD, but frankly it's hard to live with purely just Linux for me. ChromeOS has the advantage of things like near perfect High DPI support.
For what's it worth, I have been using Linux as a side-OS since pre 2000, and only in the last two years has it become really good.
It's now my main driver on all my machines and frankly I have started to prefer it.
This has never happened in the ~20 years I have been using Linux and other OS. Linux went from "meh" to just as good pretty recently, imo.
Furthermore, this is just a usability consideration. Don't forget that all other OS become more and more closed, more and more about collecting private data, and more and more about proprietary app stores.
My experience too, we've just started switched 100+ PCs at work over to Linux Mint as a result of this maturation - it's just plain better than Windows now, no ads, no upgrade ruining everything, no telemetry, no ignoring and resetting of user settings. Best of all: consistent software deployment via package management that actually works and does not include malware, adware and other janky sideloaded stuff.
Wayland is still a mess. And I can't share my screen via WebRTC in Wayland, and mixed DPI is still not as functional as Windows and Mac and ChromeOS are. I use Linux regularly, but I don't feel like it's really making much forward progress anymore.
Exactly. I only use Windows for gaming from time to time and I have to be careful about other things on it. No way to work though so I am happy that Steam is making lots of progress on their wine fork.
You could say that about Ubuntu or any other operating system. "Better safe than sorry" abused this way will lead to no more computers - not the worst future, but I'd at least be out of a job.
You can definitely use Ubuntu without it having to "phone home". That is probably not the case for Chrome OS.
By the way, interesting thing is that for Google employees, it is explicitly forbidden to use software that phones home (read that a while back, can't find the link, sorry).
> You can definitely use Ubuntu without it having to "phone home".
How do you know? You're assuming they aren't phoning home, probably because it's open source, but you've probably never verified it. And you're unlikely to be enforcing that or proactively monitoring it. So how do you know an update didn't change the rules?
You don't. You just have trust.
And you can equally use Chrome OS with the same level of trust that it's not phoning home after you turn off the analytics that tell you they are phoning home. It's not actively malicious spyware. The settings aren't ignored.
Google have actually been fined for circumventing privacy settings more than once.
In addition to the civil penalty, the order also requires
Google to disable all the tracking cookies it had said it
would not place on consumers’ computers.
Google made no promises on that setting. Apple offered a setting, failed to implement it properly, and Google got fined for it. That's what happened there.
But regardless what clearly did not happen in that case is Google violating one of Google's own settings. Which is what we're talking about here - the settings Chrome offers being violated. There's no evidence of that.
The problem is incentives. Ubuntu has no incentive to take your information. Google has. That means that even if you change the settings, you don't know if they will ask you in some obscure dialog box to turn it back on, etc. Or they will say "you upgraded, but you didn't turn off the setting again? that's your fault then". Sneaky tricks like this are happening all the time. Only if the incentives are right I can begin to trust that they will not abuse my information.
And if Ubuntu starts to abuse my trust for some reason, I will switch to a different distribution. I can already say that I don't like that Amazon shopping logo in the Unity interface.
But you're right, if they pull another trick like this in the future, I'm switching to a different distribution.
I think the comparison with Google is still way off, by the way. Android is basically ad/malware, and there is no reason to believe ChromeOS will be much different.
It would be disingenuous to say that about Ubuntu and all other operating systems when Google is the only one willfully and proactively abusing privacy all over the globe and aspiring to go even further to help China crush dissidents.
Unless you can point me to instrumentation on ChromeOS that I should be concerned with, I'm going to not assume that "all of my data" is going to Google.
Thing is, whether its ChromeOS or Windows, you are not allowed to look at what exactly they are sending or not sending, and you literally sign a contract saying that they can collect whatever they want and use it however they want.
Google has a history of downright ignoring your privacy setting for the benefit of getting more data. And they are aggressively trying to associate you with more devices. It's also not even that they want usage data specifically, they are in the business of building data rich personalized profiles of you, for whatever use they decide on later.
Whether or not you are concerned is up to you.
I don't see any advantage of ChromeOS over Linux that would, for me, be worth the risk.
> you are not allowed to look at what exactly they are sending or not sending
What? I can absolutely look at network traffic on my device. People do this... all the time. There are plenty of reports of Chrome traffic - many of them being people mistakenly believing that Chrome is doing something malicious when it isn't.
I don't believe that Google is incentivized to use host-based instrumentation to do their collection. The cost is quite high for them to do that. Much easier for them to rely on Google Analytics, Search, and various other web-based tracking mechanisms.
My android phone (which I have stopped using) sends ads as notifications based on my location. Usually it's just asking me to review something nearby but they have suggested that I visit somewhere (McDonald's, for example) then leave a review. If I turn off location services Google Maps pretends that it cannot access information like my saved addresses even though I can see them on the map. It will not allow me to use them to set a route or refer to them in any way, they are only visible as pins on the map. If Chrome OS becomes as ubiquitous as Android I'm sure such "features" will be soon to follow. People who are cynical about taking seriously Google's harvesting and usage of user data are delusional to have so much faith in them. Our last hope is that many developers still care about privacy and security. Chrome OS for web development is an unacceptable proposition.
Wow, what a value proposition!