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this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026
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You should also stop using Google products for similar reasons.
Mass surveillance for advertising seems marginally more benign than mass surveillance by one's own government, personally. Though admittedly both are bad.
Edit: I can find alternatives for most of Google's ecosystem but mapping out accurate bus routes is terrible via OSM/OsmAnd or Organic Maps. Anyone have any tips there?
The mission statement is irrelevant when the outcome is the same. Google has data a hostile power wants and gives it to them whenever they want.
Sure but our representatives should be held to a higher standard.
That requires voters willing to do that. That is the fault of the voter.
Mass surveillance for advertising is just gross. I remember a comedian making a joke saying that 'anyone here in advertising? Please kill yourself!' Also just because someone got all the info on your for advertising, it doesn't mean the government won't get access to it, because right now 4th amendment and other traditional restrictions on government overreach are moot if all they need to do is buy the data from some broker on you. This has actually happened and it was upheld in court.
The precedent for stuff like that is older than you think, but also not what you think. For example some serial killers and serial bank robbers were caught because some homeless person searched through their trash looking for something they can use, eat, or sell (all of these things are legal to do BTW) and they discover things like body parts, firearms, or brand new clothes that also fit the clothes that said criminal was wearing when they did their crimes, and said homeless people reported this to the police.
But I am quite confident that someone who just so happens to stumble upon something vs. a company watching your every move are two very different things.
Or have never used their crap, ever.
No, I don't think this is correct. There was a time during which Google did great things. Their search engine allowed millions if not billions to gain access to knowledge. They had a positive impact on a lot of FOSS projects. What they were is not what they are.
The tell was getting rid of "don't be evil" as their motto. Even for a corporation that was a little on the nose.
the bad things started earlier. I remember when people were criticizing it
Agreed. They even refused to extend their services to China because of censure. But that was before, after change of CEO, enshittification started.
I just got grapheneOS on my new phone (it is a google pixel 10, but it is the one that can handle that...) I needed a client to use my gmail which will probably be the last thing I get rid of.
If it’s the sending and receiving part of email, I’ve switched to purelymail (you could pick another) and put it behind my custom domain name. Because behind a custom domain, that’s the last time you’ll have to update your contacts as it won’t be dependent on which email provider you choose.
Searching through decades of old emails I do still use the Gmail account, but I just have to get off my butt to self host a local IMAP server for that.
Did they make contracts with them?
They have multiple contracts in the military sector.
For example: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/google-wins-200m-contract-with-us-department-of-defense/
https://defensescoop.com/2025/12/09/genai-mil-platform-dod-commercial-ai-models-agentic-tools-google-gemini/
https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2022/12/amazon-google-microsoft-oracle-awarded-9b-pentagon-cloud-contract/380596/
https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175
Wait I’m confused. Sam Altman is OpenAI right? And he says the DoW agreed to work with them but with the same prohibitions that Anthropic wanted?
Yes, that's what I read elsewhere. No guarantees in contract. So you can consider this to be bullshit or marketing. Even if it's verbal agreements now, you can be sure they won't matter.