Comment by kajecounterhack | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kajecounterhack | Hacker News Reader

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kajecounterhack

How is Microsoft more trustworthy than Google? Google's involvement in OSS vs Microsoft's time-old approach tells a huge story to people who write software.

I trust Amazon less than I do Facebook. Facebook lets me see exactly what kind of advertising data they have on me and lets me export all my data. Google does the same. Amazon just shows me recommendations and tries to sell me android tablets full of crapware or sneak their crapware onto Ubuntu. If you've ever worked at Facebook you'll know internally their culture of openness is very similar to Google's "Don't be evil" ...but less explicit. And explicit company values matter, so that is a knock on them. But yeah, Amazon seems worse. Compare their internal cultures because it does affect what direction their products take.

Apple is trustworthy only in the sense that they make hardware devices that, if backdoored, would be terrible for their business. Their cloud services have the same incentive structures as Google so I feel they're fairly equivalent (plus under the hood Apple uses one of the major cloud providers).

Apple > Google > Microsoft ~= Facebook > Amazon.

This ranking encodes:

1. Which physical devices I would trust more (iPad > Fire Tablet).

2. How wary I would be of using their services (e.g Google Search > Amazon Shopping).

3. Whose culture is better for user trust (Google's track record >> Microsoft or Facebook's track record).

I work at Microsoft, and while what you say may be true for the Microsoft of 20 years ago, the Microsoft of today is very heavily involved in OSS. We use and credit open source tools in our day to day products, contribute back to these projects, and open sourcing some of our existing tools like .NET. We're probably not at the level of Google, but far more than you're giving us credit for in this comment.

I'm very aware of the new Satya MSFT and think it's great. But you can't take away distrust built over years of Microsoft saying "we changed" then committing competition-killing bad-faith practices when they think nobody is watching.

Here's to hoping MSFT is actually different today.

Furthermore part of my calculus is that internal culture matters. Last I checked MSFT's internal culture still doesn't value openness and user trust the way Google or Facebook do, where it's a core company value.

Microsoft saying "we changed" then committing competition-killing bad-faith practices when they think nobody is watching.

As opposed to what Google repeatedly gets slapped by the EU for doing, Facebook vs SnapChat, etc?

Here's to hoping MSFT is actually different today. * Last I checked MSFT's internal culture still doesn't value openness and user trust the way Google or Facebook do, where it's a core company value.*

Google and Facebook both only open source code that doesn't endanger their competitiveness.

As an extremely happy vscode (and typescript) user, and an avid follower of the ChakraCore Node efforts, I'm well aware of the changes. The Windows telemetry stuff is also a recent change though, so I'm afraid your argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Any company will have positive sides if you look close enough.

I would largely agree with others' rankings above, I only find the placement of Google anomalous. I'd go with

Apple > Microsoft >> Amazon >>>> Google == Facebook

The fact that Apple, Microsoft and Amazon run on business models where products are primarily charged for makes a big difference. Then, among them, individual smaller grievances influence levels of trust: MS has a history of security issues with login mechanisms, newer Windows versions collect slightly excessive amounts of telemetry with difficult opt-out, Apple's closed eco systems are user-hostile and anticompetitive, etc. etc. None of them are good companies.

Facebook and Google are on a different level. And products they sell directly are secondary; you are the primary product.

Normally I would be inclined to put Google lower for one reason: Google is everywhere. Facebook is on facebook.com. Yes, there's a large social penalty to avoiding registration, but it's still entirely at your discretion. They keep shadow profiles of you via facial recognition of photos taken of you by other people who have Facebook accounts, but other than that exposure to Facebook is mostly limited by having an account there. Google is only avoidable by cutting yourself off from technological society. They are omnipresent and all powerful. And, while Facebook has a track record of publishing academic research on very creepy experiments they run on their (opted-in) users, Google meanwhile have a strong track of violating the law on collecting data in everyone and everything in the world.

Facebook are terrible, but the blindness to Google's reach is starting to seem scarier tbh.

I don't understand how you conclude that Google is everywhere whereas Facebook is only on Facebook.com. I'm not disagreeing that Google is everywhere, but I'd argue that so is Facebook. Are you making this distinction mainly because of Android and its market share? From the privacy angle, Facebook is also on Instagram, WhatsApp (this to a limited extent) and on most websites that use Facebook for comments and/or have Facebook Like buttons.

I don't have links right now, but I've read that Facebook also engages and buys data from large online tracking and profiling companies.

You're right about WhatsApp and Instagram, but they're similarly opt-in. On the in-website comments/like buttons - this is also true, but quite trivial to block (most blocking extensions will do it out of the box, some browsers are even doing it as a built-in feature). Such blockers will also block some subset of Google stuff - e.g. Google Analytics - but miss the vast majority of it.

Google provides DNS - handling every domain look-up for anyone using it. This setting is often at a router or even ISP level. Google hosts the TLS verification databases used by browsers to bulk-verify the lists of HTTPS sites you visit. Google Analytics is not just in websites, it's embedded in many non-web apps you use, even some CLI ones. Even excluding the ever-pervasive Google Analytics, Google also provides myriad services to 90% of individual websites you visit. StackOverflow relies on HTTP requests to Google servers for all posting/commenting/interactive functionality. Google (or Apple) own and control your mobile phone. They track your every move, wherever you go. They can see every app you open, and often how long you spend in it, regardless of who developed that app. They read the contents of most of the emails you send, regardless of who you host your own emails with (because not only are most personal emails on Gmail, a significant quantity of @corporatedomain ones are too). Google measures the physical location of the WiFi router you have in your house from other people's Android's as they walk by (and from Google StreetView cars).

With Facebook you can choose not to sign up to Facebook/WhatsApp or Instagram. Apart from not buying an Android phone, most of the above is not trivial to avoid, and the website stuff I mentioned in particular is only the tip of the iceberg.

> How is Microsoft more trustworthy than Google?

For one, their entire business/revenue doesn't revolve around selling advertising. While they (MS) have gotten into tracking more data with Windows 10 and so on, they are still nowhere close to where Google is when you look at what they do with Android, Chrome, Gmail, Google Search, Google Analytics, Google Home, etc.

For me personally, Google is far and away the # 1 threat to my privacy followed by Facebook and Amazon then MS and Apple at the bottom of the list.

A company's involvement in your life should have security/transparency multipliers. Google has more of your data, but they do a better job of keeping things safe and communicating with you what they have and how they use it.

That said it makes sense that if one company has too much of your data you should rightfully be wary of them. +1

When I use a microsoft product, I'm more likely to be paying for it, unlike with many Google products. So for whatever reason, I'd like to think they are protecting my privacy slightly more.

Having less of your data by default means they can do less with it, so you are "safer" for that reason. I'd be wary of confusing that with "they are trying to protect my privacy more."

How is Microsoft more trustworthy than Google? Google's involvement in OSS vs Microsoft's time-old approach tells a huge story to people who write software.

Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft all open source code that isn't part of the Crown Jewels. Even many of the parts of Android that people consider Android are closed source.

I think because although Facebook have quite a strong moral code, and a culture which upholds that, their morals themselves are somewhat questionable. In particular, they seem to see nothing wrong with collecting all the data they possible can and using it for profit-making purposes.

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