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According to The Guardian Google is a major funder of the New America Foundation, some researchers of which criticized monopolies and lauded the EU for levying a record fine for Google for antitrust reasons. This apparently wasn't received well at the advertisement company and subsequently the team who did the research got the boot.
Now might be a good time to consider your dependence on all services GOOG.
The New America Foundation is one of the leading left-leaning policy groups in the US and is led by Anne-Marie Slaughter, an author, foreign policy analyst and political scientist. In June, Barry Lynn, a senior fellow who led the thinktank's Open Markets initiative, wrote a blogpost praising the EU's decision to levy a record €2.42bn ($2.7bn) fine on Google for breaching antitrust rules and abusing its market dominance. "Google's market power is one of the most critical challenges for competition policymakers in the world today," Lynn wrote.
According to The New York Times, shortly after the post was published Schmidt, who chaired New America until 2016, contacted Slaughter to communicate his displeasure.
The blogpost was temporarily removed from New America's website before being reposted. Days later, Slaughter told Lynn that "the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways", according to an email from Slaughter to Lynn obtained by the Times. Slaughter said the decision was "in no way based on the content of your work" although she she accused Lynn of "imperiling the institution as a whole".
New America has received roughly $21m from Google, Schmidt and his family foundation since 1999. The organisation's main conference room in Washington DC is called the Eric Schmidt Ideas Lab.
Lynn and his 10-strong team have now set up Citizens Against Monopoly. "Is Google trying to censor journalists and researchers who fight dangerous monopolies?" the website asks. "Sadly, the answer is: YES."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday August 31 2017, @04:29PM (5 children)
Apparently I've found I'm not quite ready to have too many Google services in my hosts file. Open Street Map [openstreetmap.org] is a good replacement for Google Maps. However, I find I still need to use Google Maps for different things like trying to find what state an incomplete address is in. Is Bradbury St. in Hill Valley in the Hill Valley in California, New Mexico, or Oregon, all states that Statler Toyota has locations in that all have a Hill Valley (in some alternate, dystopian 2017 where Biff gets elected President), for example? I've found Open Street Maps leaving something to be desired with that kind of query.
I started paying more attention to Privacy Badger, since I don't use a total lockdown no javascript solution like many here use. I noticed the Google Analytics is not blocked by default, which sort of boggled my mind. So if you use Privacy Badger, start paying close attention to what trackers it lets through if you're a lazy person like me.
Also remember that YouTube is owned by Google (is owned by Alphabet!). I have a friend that sends me lots of YouTube links for some very interesting things (Slingshot Channel, primitive technology, analysis of historical chess matches, etc). No need to actually load YouTube in a browser. Try youtube-dl. For Gentoo users, it's in the Portage tree. I simply copy the link from IRC, pop open a command prompt, and youtube-dl $somelink. 2 minutes later I have a complete local copy of the video for perusal at my leisure.
What other Google services can we route around or at least minimize our exposure to?
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday August 31 2017, @11:59PM
I use openstreetmap a lot, but if I need a more "google like" experience, I have started using https://wego.here.com/ [here.com]
It works like google in that it can do things like "find pizza places near $location". Basically I find it does everything Google maps does, but perhaps not as refined. On the flip side, it is improving every time I use it, and the slightly less refinement I experience is worth it by not being Google. Especially as they seem more privacy focused (e.g. when I used their app, they asked me if it is ok to send my route traveled to help with traffic analysis, which was nice) and more flexible (e.g. you can download maps for offline use, very useful when you go roaming, or have no signal, or just want to be disconnected)
YMMV of course, but it works so well for me I even installed their app, and use that for navigation (even does live traffic like Google).
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday September 01 2017, @03:47AM
I lock a lot down but even I let Google Analytics through since most web site operators depend on it so much. Nobody owns their own infrastructure and even if they do it got so complicated that they can't just parse their own apache log files and see who is using their site.
I'd really like to find out just how much google stuff can be ripped out of a commercial android ROM before it breaks to the point it isn't usable. They seem to have crossed a line recently, going from a potential, future Evil to a clear and present danger.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday September 01 2017, @11:01AM
The better it is, the more people will use it. The more people who use it, the more people will appreciate it. The more people who appreciate it, the more people with want to contribute notes or edits. And the more people who contribute to it, the better it will be. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday September 01 2017, @03:01PM (1 child)
I've got a bigger issue with Privacy Badger -- it seems to flag some things based on what the site *requests* rather than what actually gets *retrieved*. So if you've got a firewall somewhere blocking advertisers, they'll still show up on Privacy Badger, which isn't very helpful.
Instead I use a combination of an external firewall and Mozilla's own Lightbeam plugin. Lightbeam builds up a list of every domain that actually gets through, so you can periodically look through it and add anything fishy to your firewall blocklist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @05:00PM
For me the "balanced approach" of Privacy Badger is not enough which is why I use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy/ [mozilla.org]
(there was some minor kink with requestpolicycontinued)
Yes you need to make the decisions yourself but in my book that's a definite plus. And I take whitelists over blacklists any day when it comes to my privacy. Why take a chance? Why let somebody else call the shots?