this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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Everything Google does is evil. How are people still using anything they make—or control the repo for (chromium, android)
At least Android actually gives you freedom. What other alternatives (that actually work) are there? I'd rather have a phone with an OS made by an evil corp that I can actually control, than an OS that doesn't even let me install apps not approved by the manufacturer.
Using a degoogled LineageOS was great. It’s just that the world around it has changed so much that doing certain things wasn’t really viable any more. Having a phone like that in 2010 would have been awesome, but nowadays it’s really inconvenient. Nowadays, there are some highly unfortunate software needs that don’t quite fit with this philosophy any more.
I didn’t come up with the idea that my bank requires an app, and that the app absolutely requires an OEM phone with a normal Android and GAPPS. They started requiring that nonsense, which put me in a tight spot. Do I decide to live without money or will I switch to an inferior OS.
There are also some nice to have apps that came up with similar stupid decisions. Living without them means living in the past, and I would be ok with that too. Getting a minor inconvenience in return of having more privacy is ok with me. Suffering significant inconveniences is not OK. I had to draw the line somewhere, which unfortunately meant switching away from LineageOS.
I went with iOS, because IMO it’s the least bad option out there. I made some horrible compromises, but at least I can live in 2023 like everyone else. I’m not at all happy with this decision, but at least iOS isn’t half as infuriating as it used to be 10 years ago.
I use a phone with LOS and I haven't had any problems with it. Though I am 13, so I don't have to worry about stuff like banks apps yet.
LOS is good for a lot of things, so keep on using it until you run into a brick wall like I did. Hopefully, someone has already figured out a solution by then or maybe you can just choose to use a different app instead.
I'm 13, I'll probably be able to choose what banks I keep my money at and other stuff like this based on their support for my OS.
Well.. for now at least. Who’s to say that won’t be the next thing on their list. They do make a pretty penny on the play store as is, and could improve that if they banned side-loading. And let’s be honest, side-loading is probably a niche thing still.
Niche for common people, but very much used by privacy concerned tech ppl. F-droid is a thing and so is obtainium, 2 play store alternatives that are side-loaded and give access to FOSS apps.
Some manufacturers limit rooting, promote their appstores, recomend to redownload a freshly installed app but now from them, have their 'antivirus' and 'cache' scanners, randomly unload background apps they think are less valuable from RAM and revoke their permissions while their own apps require additional permissions and accounts even though they just switch wallpapers or play videos. If we look at that, Google have much to implement and still have side-loading availiable, just very disencouraged.
And when they allow “sideloading” in the next version, what will your argument be?
Who knows, I might switch.
They make fantastic services that are far more functional than their oss competitors and it's far far less effort than hosting and dealing with that bullshit.
Cannot disagree more. I’ve found Google services to be terrible in comparison to their competitors. Don’t get me started on privacy. Ironically, you’re saying they’re better in the same article that says they’re removing adblockers. Which is clearly not better.
Most folks disagree. You are in the minority.
I doubt most folks disagree, but on that note: everything the majority agrees on is factual and the correct method—right?
That seems slightly hyperbolic
How so?
It didn't start that way, it wasn't until they had dominance in multiple areas that they started fucking their customers, but the difference here is that it's stupid easy to change to Firefox, Safari, or gasp Edge.
Edge is chromium. And safari is still apple only. So you're last sentence is wrong, but it is indeed super easy to switch to Firefox, or another non-chromium based browser.
Gnome Web (Epiphany Browser)
If you are into WebKit (is a port, I'm aware), that browser looks worth giving a shot, what features do you like about it?
I've only really used it to check how my portfolio site would render on a non-Chromium and non-Gecko browser, and actually found a few issues with the site that needed fixing. Would have used Safari if I had it, but the only apple device in my household runs Linux 🤫.
Aside from that, it's a very lightweight browser and fits in well with the Gnome DE design style. Personally I wouldn't use it as a primary browser since I've got all my extensions, bookmarks and container tabs all set up in Firefox, however the simplicity and clean design of Epiphany is quite appealing imo. The last time I tried it there was an option in the browser settings to block ads, pretty nice to have that OOTB
Chromium isn't as bad as Chrome, Google actively tries to get you to use Chrome by blocking some features in Chromium (like account syncing).
That's like equating evil and evil, both are still Google, both are gonna have mv2 removed (eventually) making web filtering a nightmare. I have all kinds of add-ons that prohibit any scripts from running on a website without my explicit authorization. Mv3 will break that level of security. Chromium=chrome both owned and maintained by Google.
You are aware that Chromium is an open source project and isn't owned by anyone, right? Google created the engine/framework and are the biggest contributors to it, but that's akin to saying "Red Hat (or Linus himself) owns Linux".
Google has full control over Chrome which is closed source and has their specific tweaks, they don't have full control over Chromium. I could fork the Chromium repo and there is nothing that Google can do to add in any of their tracking because I have a full copy of the source code and can modify it as I see fit.
Chromium is not Chrome. Just like Edge isn't Chrome.
Forking chromium and stripping out all the google tracking is near impossible(for smaller dev teams). I am aware there are valiant attempts at de-googleing chromium but every one of them that i tried was either still phoning home, or ran like shit, or were so behind on security updates that it was dangerous to use them.
Money corrupts everything
School/university online classes and messaging/collaboration
Business enterprise messaging/collaboration locked to Google services
Business enterprise sites locked to Chromium based browsers
Government sites locked to Chromium based browsers
Nothing is locked forever.
Remember when government websites only worked on IE6, well into the late 2000s? I even remember Hillary Clinton proposing that government employees only be allowed to use Internet Explorer when she was a senator.
Anyone advocating for IE in the early 2000s was because the web sucked back then and IE could run ActiveX. Granted, thinking back, giving a web app direct hardware access did lead to a lot of security issues. However, and theoretically, if the software is clean (like internal government software should be), it was pretty powerful.
Additionally, I challenge your Clinton remark, and ask you provide a source.
I misremembered, it was when she was secretary of state:
https://www.theregister.com/2009/07/13/firefox_and_us_state_department/
I don't know what your quote is from, is it chatgpt?
She never said it. She said,
Clearly pushing the issue to the other guy, because it’s not her fucking job.
Fuck Hillary, but get your facts right or go back to Truth Social where you came from.
Not forever - maybe - but until then, government employees trying to log onto government services like iFTDTL or NSIPS or half a dozen other sites, as well as students logging into their university email or corporate employees logging into enterprise networks are stuck on Google apps or Google-adjacent like Edge.