Every time you use a G**gle device or open a G**gle application (without having taken the necessary "tech" precautions, and in some cases there are none that are effective), you are as much as inviting G**gle to perform a colorectal exam on you.
Posted on 11/12/2023 8:51:26 AM PST by Paal Gulli
There’s a setting on your phone and web browser that Google is desperate to keep you from discovering. How desperate? In 2021 alone, Google paid Apple, Samsung and others $26.3 billion to keep it buried.
That’s more money each year than McDonald’s makes selling burgers.
This setting affects who gets to track your location and watch what you look up online. It affects the usefulness of the information you see and how much of your screen is taken up by ads.
I’m talking about your search engine — what pops up the answers when you type into the search bar. Google pays the makers of phones, laptops and browsers to be your default and to stop them from even presenting you other options during setup...
...You might be wondering: So what? Google has a reputation for good results, in part because it has data from so many users. What’s so bad about making Google the default?
What we’re learning from the trial flips that question on its head. If Google’s so good, then why does it need to spend as much as all the Big Macs combined to make sure we never even consider the alternatives? What have we been missing while Google has been our default? And how would we know if something better came along?..
...The biggest price we pay for monopolies is that they limit better ideas in ways we’ll never get to know.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Every time you use a G**gle device or open a G**gle application (without having taken the necessary "tech" precautions, and in some cases there are none that are effective), you are as much as inviting G**gle to perform a colorectal exam on you.
How much of that 26 billion dollars are your tax dollars, courtesy of the Federal Government? I bet most of it is.
I’m amazed the WAPO published this.
Bfl
“There’s a setting on your phone and web browser that Google is desperate to keep you from discovering.”
Does anyone know *what* that is? And how to change it?
“I’m amazed the WAPO published this.”
They want their cut to stay quiet.
Can’t read article from the Washington Post unless I subscribe for $ or read free if I give my email address. Here’s ny response ... FO Washington Compost
Settings->Search Engine. On both Linux and Android Chrome +derivatives. Probably Windows, too. The fact that they find it hard to change says more about the WAPO than anything else.
News you can’t use.
Google USED to have a reputation for good results. Now the search results suck.
I just got some junk mail from google. They say that my name was chosen at random. From the way I understand it then They want to pay me to allow them to monitor my devices.
What a crazy world.
“The fact that they find it hard to change says more about the WAPO than anything else.”
Was going to post the same thing. If someone wants to use a search engine other than Google on their iPhone or android device or PC or Mac or tablet, it’s ridiculously easy to do so and I suspect that the average user could figure out at least one method of doing so within approximately 1 minute if said user were so inclined. The WaPo is grossly exaggerating here.
For most searches Google works fine. For anything political I use the Russian search engine Yandex.
I’m not particularly tech-savvy, but I changed my phone’s and tablet’s browser to Duck Duck Go ages ago.
Default search engine. It’s not that hard to change.
Zero.
I’m not particularly tech-savvy, but I changed my phone’s and tablet’s browser to Duck Duck Go ages ago.
Same here.
All of it considering Google IS our government intelligence agency. It’s the CIA, NSA and about another dozen alphabets all rolled into one.
Duck Duck Go search results are delivered by Microsoft Bing. So if you trust Bill Gates and Satya Nadella, you’re fine.
I use the brave browser and have start page set as my default search engine. My laptop my tablet my telephone and my desktop. I never use Google as a search engine.
One thing I have learned is that younger people have literally no concept of privacy. It is being bred out of us. Also I know old people my age who don’t seem to give a damn about their privacy. I can’t swear but it seems like liberals of any age don’t care.
Got a new laptop a couple days ago and all the initial work is sidestepping as much of Microsoft’s privacy invasion as possible.
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