You must be a joy at parties.
How is any of the data private when you willingly use their tools, sites, servers, etc? You open up google.com and type things in, what privacy do you expect? Or am I missing something you are referring to?
How is any of the data private when you willingly use their tools, sites, servers, etc? You open up google.com and type things in, what privacy do you expect? Or am I missing something you are referring to?
I'll gladly cite examples: Search ad dark patterns. I remember a time when G was _proud_ of that their ads were entirely distinct from native search results, and never caused native results to fall beneath the fold. Now when I search on even a moderately sized monitor, literally half of the first page results are sponsored or ads (native content being entirely beneath the fold), to boot in a manner increasingly less distinct from the native results. (there used to be a separate ad box, and then a line between ads and native, and now just a tiny little 'ad' or grey 'sponsored' blip)
I've seen these encroachments across the board; youtube/G+ integrated logins was another, dark patterns for data-gathering approval on droid ("do you want to share data; yes/cancel"), which I'd best summarize as a slow collapse of any legitimacy to their "don't be evil" mantra from early on.
The one concrete point I can think of for "scraping data without approval" is that when various new data policies were established and yes/no controls added to your G profile settings, I believe some of them defaulted on? I've heard mumblings both ways in the HN discussions on this topic so it's a less strong point than my previous, but may be a basis for a more established argument of that aspect of dark patterns in private data acquisition that the parent was trying to pose.
yuhong: Responding to your question as an edit to my own comment since two -4 comments is probably enough for one day. Silently implementing opt-out features, and automatically opting everyone into new ways to violate their privacy, granting themselves the right to change their terms of service or privacy policy without notification. Using confusing terminology to make it difficult to discern what is the "more private" option. (Opting out of Google+'s "Featured Photos" feature, for example, requires you to switch ON the option to shut OFF Google stealing your intellectual property.) As existencebox noted, making ads on search look as close to search results as possible to mislead people into clicking on scam and malware laden Google Ads rather than real results...
Or making Android Location History on by default and then using it for things like http://searchengineland.com/hood-google-adwords-measures-sto... -- yes, they're reporting anonymized data to the advertisers, but of course they're storing your actual location data, with a well-hidden knob to turn it off.
Doing things people probably wouldn't like done to them if they knew about them with a well-hidden knob to turn it off is fairly dark-patterny as far as I'm concerned.
Are you a self appointed privacy vigilante or were you elected by the people to protect them? Do you also protect people from Credit Card companies, ISP's, Cable Companies, e-Commerce sites and Cell Phone companies or are you just infatuated with Google?
I do speak about Google more than average, largely because the volume of fanboyism around the company is so massive, and their PR department generates so much fiction. I don't have to tell you AT&T is a terrible company, you already know, so I don't waste a lot of time doting on it. Combatting the sort of psychological warfare Google employs requires drastically more effort.
Kicking the person trying to protect others because of some nitpicking.
Who are you protecting, Google? Must be hard protecting poor G against some individuals on forums.
But true, Google can't be stopped as long as software developers and companies continue to sell out for ad money.
They've also taken a public stand for privacy, whether out of self-interest or not, that's something Google will probably never do.
This is exactly what we need, exposing antisocial behavior for what it is.
Yes, Google was doing that sort of thing for Chrome distribution for a while. They've stopped since, which is better than nothing, I guess. [Edit: apparently they haven't stopped, according to ocdtrekkie's comment! Or maybe they have started again.]
Point is, a lot of people are NOT using Google's products willingly. They may be using them because someone else set them up with the product and they don't know how to change, they may be using it because they're required to for work (Google docs, e.g.).
It's worth noting that Sundar Pichai's claim to fame at Google, prior to Chrome itself, was getting the Google Toolbar installed on everyone's PCs whether they wanted it or not. The CEO of Google isn't just a fan of software installation dark patterns like this, he's the guy responsible for it at Google.
But in terms of the ethical question, we're now talking about how if I break into your house to steal all your unhealthy potato chips that's better than if I break into your house to steal your money. The fundamental problem is breaking into your house.
You can't use acrobat with the browser you're trying to download it with.
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/display-pdf-in-browser...
I visit that same link using Firefox on Linux and don't get a Chrome install checkbox on the page, but maybe someone else is?
Also, Adobe Reader is a standalone program, you don't install it to embed in the browser. (Both Edge and Chrome can display PDF files natively.)
This has nothing to do with "recommended" apps. Chrome is pushed with Adobe Reader because Google pays them to do so. Similarly, McAfee pays to have their software installed with the Adobe Flash plugin installer.
You linked to the Adobe Reader download page, which asks you to install chrome if you don't have a supported browser. Which you didn't.
I get that you have an axe to grind here, but it seems like you're cherry picking an example of where Edge doesn't support something so Adobe is recommending a supported download.
Adobe doesn't recommend the Chrome download when visiting with Firefox, for example.
You're creating an incredible work of fiction to avoid a long-standing well-known truth: That Google pays Adobe to bundle Chrome in their installer when the user is coming from a Microsoft browser. (If I come from Firefox, it offers McAfee's Security Scan Plus, which also pays Adobe for the privilege.) This isn't a technical or compatibility issue, and it never has been. This is where Adobe makes money on Adobe Reader downloads.
This started in 2011, long before Microsoft Edge existed: http://www.chromestory.com/2011/09/google-chrome-is-now-bund...
We don't know the dollar amount of the deal, as Google keeps those sorts of things confidential. But it is very similar to the figure an Oracle lawyer dropped, that Google paid Apple a billion dollars to keep Google as the iPhone's default search: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-22/google-pa...
Note that until recently, Google also paid to be default on Firefox, also rumored in the one billion dollar range: http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/20/technology/firefox-mozilla-g...
Some additional reading on this strategy, is that Chrome came about as a fear that Microsoft might disable or cripple the Google Toolbar, which was used to push people over to Google Search and collect their browsing data. (And was also heavily promoted as a bundle item in other installers like Java.) Sundar Pichai, now Google's CEO, spearheaded the toolbar and then Chrome: http://fortune.com/2014/10/27/google-rise-of-sundar-pichai/
If you believe Google got where it was by being "the best", it may be hard to realize this, or easy to overlook the facts. But Google's market share is largely a result of paying for other companies to push their products, with or without user permission.
With IE11, which does support ActiveX, it shows ... a Chrome download checkbox. And the Google toolbar.