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Comment by Osmium | Hacker News Reader

If we have to have corporate oversight to get a decent OS, then I'd rather one I pay (e.g. Apple for iOS) than one I don't (e.g. Google for Android/Chrome OS). I want to be the customer, not the product being sold. Even if that's not what you want, choice is still a good thing: without choice, we have vendor lock-in and stagnation of ideas.

To pick an example, I think the mobile ecosystem would be a lot better right now were WebOS still a viable alternative. Instead HP left it to rot. How much progress did we lose there?

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> If we have to have corporate oversight to get a decent OS, then I'd rather one I pay (e.g. Apple for iOS) than one I don't (e.g. Google for Android/Chrome OS). I want to be the customer, not the product being sold.

For branded Android/ChromeOS, AFAIK, you are paying Google for it the same way you pay for prebundled Windows. Insofar as the OS cost is discounted because you are an advertising target for Google, that's not that different from Windows PCs where the OS cost is offset because you are crapware target for third-party business partners of the system vendor.

And advertising revenue, isn't, I think, the only motivation for the low cost of consumer ChromeOS; low-cost consumer ChromeOS is the lever for building acceptance, knowledge base, and build a base of apps to motivate institutional sales of ChromeOS (sort of the way that getting Apple computers into schools was always a way to build commercial consumer and business markets for them.)

>I want to be the customer, not the product being sold

Sorry but this is not either or anymore. They will take your money and you will still be a product being sold. Just because you paid money doesn't mean they won't try to squeeze an extra penny off of your information if they can get away with it.

Witness: iAds.

For real: when is the last time you saw an iAd?

Don't talk shit on Android. It is FOSS, therefore it respects your 4 freedoms, unlike iOS, which you cited.

Agreed on Chrome OS. I'll stay with my cheap old Linux Thinkpad. My remote services run on my server at home anyway and they're pretty close to what Google offers, minus the sleek look (who cares, I'm functional).

"Don't talk shit on Android. It is FOSS" - is it? did you ever commit code to it? did anyone outside of google and other corp ever committed code to it?

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