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Is Google that bad?

Technerd108 said:
Maybe buy her a new watch? $1500 can buy a nice watch for her? Mechanical movements generally need servicing around 5-10 years. Seiko and Orient movements like 4r35 may run closer to 20 years without needing service. Service costs can vary widely by brand and what they need to do. Seiko service should cost under $200 while ETA style movements around $300 or you can just replace the movement for less?

If you like analog and digital watches there are a few nerds on here like myself. There are some very nice affordable watches under $400. There are mainstream brands, micro brands and Chinese micro brands like San Martin or Watchdives, etc. Watchuseek.com is a decent resource. Affordable Watches Forum.
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I would but it's my mothers watch that was handed down to my wife. I am going to get it working no matter what the cost. I am going to shop around to reputable places later, that was just one quote from a dealer that I sold my Rolex GMT to ( got a great return on that one too).
 
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cbsnbiker said:
I agreed to nothing of the sort.

I have never signed up for Google. I have never created a Google account. I have never had a Gmail account. I stopped using Google as a search engine well over a decade ago. Etc.

Yet, Google has hoovered up all sorts of data on me, without my consent. This started with harvesting my contact and other info from the address books of hundreds of persons, back in the early days of Google and Gmail (or possibly earlier). This hoovering continues to this day.

I have no power to remove this data. None of us do.

Of course, Google is not unique in this. Facebook is also guilty of this. It has volumes of data on me without my consent, posted by others, despite my never having subscribed to it.

And so forth.

I remember when the World Wide Web went live. I was concerned about privacy. I and many others advocated for strong privacy protections. We were ignored. Here we are.
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Stop using the internet then. Go back to life before the internet. It can be done.
 
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Steve Adams said:
That ship has sailed my friend. LONG AGO. Accept it. Oh, buying apple products is not advocating for your rights to privacy either. FYI.
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Prefacing this with: I realize that you and I see things differently and I respect your view.

I'd argue that Apple is a lesser weevil. But one still needs to put on adblockers/encrypted DNS/etc - because yes, trackers are everywhere. (You can do all this and more on Windows/Android devices). At least selling your data to others isn't Apple's primary income method, yet.

I will agree that it is virtually impossible to use the internet today without millions of trackers everywhere trying to get a piece of your privacy. While we can mitigate some of it... it's everywhere.
 
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I use a couple of Raspberry Pi's at home running PiHole (nefarious dns crusher) plus a few browser plugins on all of my Chrome web browsers on my two primary desktop platforms: ChromeOS and macOS.

With all of that in addition to Google Advanced Protection Program MFA, etc., I don't have any issues.

Using Chrome and Google apps has also been vetted repeatedly by my sick security buddies who present IANS and SANS security courses and consult in oodles of enterprises.
 
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Steve Adams said:
That ship has sailed my friend. LONG AGO. Accept it. Oh, buying apple products is not advocating for your rights to privacy either. FYI.
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One can reduce one's exposure to nefarious forces. One can also choose not to engage in certain areas. One can also advocate for one's rights.

I do not believe in throwing in the towel unnecessarily.
 
Google is bad? Yeah. Google's product are bad? Absolutely no. They are one of the best products out there and most of them are free to use. Yeah, the payment method is your data/privacy but there are a lot of people that just don't care about them. Maybe, is not that they don't care, they just don't think Google as a threat.

In the end, this is not white or black. For me is just how much do you want to keep your data/privacy yours. I use Android and in the past I disabled all kind of google services and apps to try to reduce the amount of data google receive, etc but now, I bought a car with Android Auto and just reset my phone to use it and man, it works really well.

Also those little things that makes your life easier like google wallet, google photos, also work fine.

I'm not into full google since I use Firefox, Posteo as my main email and duckduckgo. I hate some things from google like the terrible AI search and I'm really critic with AI (gemini) in general but it also helps me to review work emails before send them since I'm not a native english speaker (I learnt a lot of things doing this) so yes, in the end, it is up to you to reach and understand the level you feel comfortable with technology in general.

Be critic with the technology and embrace it the way it works for you
 
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It’s not bad. It’s just different. In my younger days, I would have loved using android, all the customisation and tinkering. In fact, I was the SPoC in my office to load cyanogen and MIUI on people’s devices. Now I view my devices as tools that accomplish certain purposes and I need them to work reliably each time.
 
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tong_si_nan_pei said:
It’s not bad. It’s just different. In my younger days, I would have loved using android, all the customisation and tinkering. In fact, I was the SPoC in my office to load cyanogen and MIUI on people’s devices. Now I view my devices as tools that accomplish certain purposes and I need them to work reliably each time.
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Android today is nothing like back in the days of cyanogen etc. It's much more iOS like now, except you can customize it more using launchers and stuff.
 
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Steve Adams said:
Android today is nothing like back in the days of cyanogen etc. It's much more iOS like now, except you can customize it more using launchers and stuff.
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It's certainly nothing like it was, it used to be a fragmented mess of an OS but as you rightly said it has become more iOS like in its nature, much smoother and has it's own polish now.

It's better, much better.
 
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