Google LLC is an American multinational technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world" and one of the world's most valuable brands due to its market dominance, data collection, and technological advantages in the area of artificial intelligence. Its parent company Alphabet is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. Taken from Wikipedia.
Terms of Service, Privacy Policy
Disclaimer: This will account for every service Google offers from the namesake search engine to subsidiaries like Youtube and Google Play.
Namely for 2 step authentication. I never recommend giving away your phone number to advertising companies.
Apart from the usual legal obligations, they'll also keep records of direct communication to Google, like CS chat logs, and information shared with others, like emails. Last one makes sense, First one hmmmm...
Yes.
Especially true for Android ROMS filled with Google software.
Not surprising from the company that created wifi scanning.
Youtube pretty much makes this as obvious as Clark Kent is Superman.
I have just recently found out Google Messages and Gmail now support E2EE. Still if you send messages not belonging to those 2 then they're still unencrypted. Score split time.
I'm fairly certain Google owns the word "advertisement" by now.
It's literally called Google Analytics.
I should honestly make this a +5 to be honest, but I must not be biased.
You can test this for yourself by trying to use Google on Tor Browser.
As much as I would have liked to give this the opposite, the privacy policy somehow says otherwise.
AOSP at least gave us some good privacy respecting ROMs like Graphene and Calyx.
I feel dirty for having put all 3 criteria about source code availability.
For Youtube, there's Newpipe. For Google Play, there's Aurora Store. For Android, there's multiple custom ROMs available. Honestly I'd exhaust this page if I listed them all.
Google is just a subisidiary and Alphabet Inc. is the parent company. This is where the fun begins.
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Analysis: Well well well, if it ain't PRISM member 2009. I was expecting this to score lower but something tells me this'll be the highest SPT score the GAFAM/FAANG group will ever get. It's pretty much a well known fact that Google's one of the most privacy invasive companies out there, but a lot of people still use their products due to how well they've integrated themselves into the lives of every person on the globe. I also believe that the big tech companies have major influence over most if not all news outlets out there so you'll be barely seeing news like this on the front page (literally 1984). Google services are services I will almost never recommend, no matter how easy and convenient they are to use. I'll usually say something along the lines of "use Duckduckgo or Brave Search instead of Google" or "use Cryptpad instead of Google Docs" or "use a frontend like Invidious or Piped if you want to watch Youtube videos" or "use ProtonMail or Tutanota if you want a privacy respecting alternative to Gmail". I could honestly go on and on but I believe many people have already made many lists about many privacy respecting alternatives. I know it's gonna be hard transitioning to a DeGoogled internet environment, but it's possible and if you're concerned about online advertisers making money off you while you gain nothing from it, then it's gonna be worth it.