Google is an information problem

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Posted by Fredy
Aug 27, 2012 at 08:31 PM

We all know it, Google sells our info to people willing to pay for it; some of us ask for laws against Google doing just what they want, naively thinking that legislators would see as their duty to protect us from Google “stealing” from us whilst in fact, they, the governments only want to have their hand on this info, and on a max of it.

Obscurity is mandatory: You never really know what Google knows about you, let alone the government, and that is good for them. The other way round, they do it similarly:

Just this evening, Adobe told me brand-new Flash 11 has arrived!

I never use Flash on my own means - and the iBoys threw it out of their systems long ago -, but then, my old IE8 presents more and more problems with more and more sites, so at least with Flash in those web sites, I thought, well, cannot harm if I get the current version!

That was a mistake of mine you bet, since I am posting here. In fact, Adobe is that heavyweight that bought superior FreeHand just in order to bury it, so that for your vector graphic, you now have to buy their inferior Illustrator, and there is a frenzy of expensive updates, you cannot leave many of them out, or you are back to zero, i.e. have to buy full price, etc., etc. - Adobe is most famous here in Europe for selling us their stuff 2 or 3 times their U.S. prices - even the English versions that is!

(On the other hand, Unilever will more and more market single wash packs of their washing powder, etc., considering Europe becoming a poverty heaven now - like they have been doing in Africa for many years, but that is another story (in Financial Times Deutschland of today - no, I do not invent anything.)

Back to Google: So I installed Flash 11, the update. Adobe, thank you, also installed Google toolbar into my venerable IE8, and installed Google Chrome - you know, that famous sending everything home browser that is so slick it is outright ugly -, and on top of it, it made Chrome my default browser.

Afterwards, I had to de-install all this crap, without knowing of course if they left behind their sending-home components since that is all that is important to them. Why am I complaining? I could have interrupted those installations mid-way, but if you do that, you cannot even de-install correctly afterwards, so it is better to not interrupt. And I know, lots of little crappy free sw install this Google crap, e.g. YouTube Downloader - but they all are correct enough to put a checkbox somewhere, not always really visible, and indeed they are hoping you will overlook the checkbox, but checkbox there is.

Whilst with Adobe crap, no checkbox. So why they do it? For me it is 100 p.c. certain that Google pays a little bit of all their ad money to third parties, in order to throw their crap on you at every possible occasion.

And the heavyweight, Adobe, is introducing throwing crap at you without your even checking out of that scene - they have the power, they just do.

Back to topic: I do NOT think that anybody anywhere would have the slightest interest whatsoever in giving away his info material, his real stuff, to big player that not only do exactly what they want, but that now do not even shrink back anymore from FORCING you and your stuff into their ways.

Pay for something, get hold of your material - do not fall into “free” traps - whenever they will have been processing all of your private material for years, some day you even will know.

But do not be stupid enough to assume they will ever tell you in advance.

Posted by razorboy
Aug 28, 2012 at 12:54 AM

I use no Google products or services, and that excludes their search engine as well.

Posted by Ken
Aug 28, 2012 at 03:22 PM

Fredy wrote:
>I could have interrupted those
>installations mid-way, but if you do that, you cannot even de-install correctly
>afterwards, so it is better to not interrupt. And I know, lots of little crappy free sw
>install this Google crap, e.g. YouTube Downloader - but they all are correct enough to
>put a checkbox somewhere, not always really visible, and indeed they are hoping you
>will overlook the checkbox, but checkbox there is.
> >Whilst with Adobe crap, no
>checkbox.

I recently updated Adobe Flash on two laptops, and on both installations, I was given the choice to not install the Google toolbar. I am not certain if you received a different update, but the versions that I received clearly permitted me to opt of the toolbar installation. Sorry to hear that your installation was not as easy.

—Ken

Posted by Fredy
Sep 1, 2012 at 03:25 PM

Ken, let me make a further precision. I not only had not been given any choice, by checkbox or whatever, but I had not been given any INFO either that anything other than the Flash update would be installed - and I always have a thorough look for such things on such download sites, incl. for chamois text within yellow background.

Since we certainly both are right here, I had a quick thinking, and here’s what occured to me as a possible solution to our different experience: Goo1984 only does such things / allows for such things being done by third parties (here: by Adobe) where they think they can get up to it, so in your country, they don’t dare do it yet, whilst mine is the most corrupt in the Western hemisphere. And with “processing your data”, they might do the same way, yet doing it already in countries where the respective governments collaborate with them in this, or vice versa, or where they give a sh** upon what third parties do with their “subjects”, and not even asking where goverments risk to tell the press about such questions if asked. And, by “processing your data”, of course, I never meant “store it”, or even “analyze it anonymously in order to present you “better” advertising”, but I wanted to express my concern that one day, they could you do in with everything they’ll know then about you, John Doe, born on *, living at this address, etc., etc., etc. ad infinitum.

With “toys” like Zuckerberg’s, people at least distinguish between what they like to withhold (for the moment at least), and what they are willing to share. With “tools” from Goo1984, there is no more such distinction, and people who “load up steir stuff” into such environments - paid or free, by the way, a necessary precision since I said “pay for preserving your stuff”, meaning “pay for some non-cloud thing”, not wanting to falsely express “pay for your cloud storage, and don’t fear” -, ultimately share everything, with “everybody” = government, authorities, any large corporation that has it ways…

Posted by Fredy
Sep 4, 2012 at 06:16 PM

During the last days, I’ve been bothered by 7 or 8 sites to download (= not activate, but download) Flash, so these incredible people do not only persecute you but don’t even mind to check first if you’ve got the latest version.

This didn’t stop, so I downloaded Flash two more times, to no avail: More sites are asking me to download Flash - seems Adobe pays a lot for that?

Anyway, the sole occasion, up to now, where the Googlecrap was downloaded with it, was with Adobe that had asked me to download Flash (and Adobe doesn’t ask for more downloads, seems themselves at least HAVE got a routine checking first you’re “up-dated”), so we have got third parties who seem to get paid by Adobe for downloading Flash to you, and we’ve got Adobe that tries first (in order to not pay those commissions I suppose)... and that’s paid by Google to force Googlecrap on you - or do they do it without payment?

Have different countries, different languages… and you’ll get hundreds of possible alternatives how Flash might be updated, with or without some more crap, from anywhere.

But then, 2012 - and I’m looking forward to a dozen or more MORE sites wanting to update my thrice-updated Flash. Unfortunately, with XP, I cannot get any better from MS than IE8, so I need Flash, but my warmest congrats to the iBoys to have CLEARED their system from such a nuisance.

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