Talk:Google

Other potential Google topics

(These are from memory of past experience and events, I'm not searching for sources now but I'm sure there are past online discussions or news articles that cover these)

Firefox search engine- Google has been paying Firefox devs Mozilla to keep their search engine as the default engine. During browser setup, there is no prompt to select search engines or inform that they can switch in settings. This is a matter of Google abusing its monopoly-like power to influence a Chromium competitor and ultimately manipulate the browser market which can influence consumer's choices without them knowing. Has had recent legal action taken.

Android (and Chromium)- Google has been taking certain actions to increase the dependency of their own proprietary services against the Android Open Source Project. One example is removing Miracast support for no clear reason, likely being to encourage Chromecast usage, and where custom ROM makers simply re-added support afterwards. Another example is the dependency of Google Play Services, an app that can collect data in the background, supposively required for the majority of Google apps and services which cannot function independently without it, a breach of permissions (?). With Android TV, Google requires that the default home launcher, which shows unsolicited advertisements on the first page, be set on 3rd party ATV devices such as the Nvidia Shield, in order for the distributor to be able to distribute the play store and services on the device (there are few to no alternatives for TV appstores on ATV, so the play store is practically a dependency). By extension, the Chromium browser has been seeing similar ties with Google services despite being open source, though more issues with the web browser arise in advertisements and data collection.

Daydream- a discontinued successor VR headset similar to Google Cardboard, features a built in NFC chip that automatically opens to the Daydream app. The Daydream app however cannot function on devices newer than the ones which were present when the headset launched, despite modern devices exceeding the performance requirements. Any Daydream-specific games require the app to function, and the included remote additionally is dependent on the app and cannot clearly be used for other purposes, essentially making it ewaste (perhaps some hackers could find a workaround but there's not much interest in it). The headset itself can function as a cardboard headset if the NFC chip is blocked or NFC is turned off.

Note: it's probably easy to list off google's failed products, but the challenge is to list those which google mistreated users when shutting down, such as failing to provide equal or similar alternatives (Picasa -> ggl photos, Picasa had an API that allowed public sharing of photos, that was deprecated over time with no replacement). Shutting down something but then transferring user data to a new service, such as maybe Hangouts to Allo to Google Chat, might not be examples that would fit the wiki.

Youtube- an entire issue on its own, topics of interest include the actual ownership of videos hosted on the platform and to what legal extent Youtube is able to demonetize or take down videos or user accounts (expands into issues of transparency which is in scope of the wiki, as well as legal issues of copyright and DCMA which is beyond the scope of the wiki). Additionally, there are consideration of how advertisements are delivered in the platform, which is part of advertisements and data collection. There have been claims of Youtube (and perhaps other Google services) intentionally adding delays on non-Chromium web browsers, however I don't think Google has made any official statement regarding this.

Advertisements and data collection- Google makes money off of ads, and are well known to be collecting identifiable user information sometimes without explicit consent, in order to deliver targeted ads, and likely sell the data to 3rd parties. Google currently provides some tools to control what data they store, however there are little to no settings to set custom user preferences for targeted ads. Additionally, with Chromium and the Manifest browser specification, Google has implemented measures specifically targeting ad blockers to reduce their functionality, while giving (or ignoring the issues of) ads with more control and more data from the user's web browser. Google claims that these actions would help increase security or privacy in the web browser, however they ignore the argument which ad blockers help increase privacy and security by disabling data collecting scripts and malicious links and advertisements.

reCaptcha- the automatic checkbox ("I am human") has been claimed to use advanced algorithms to identify users against bots (see: generative AI detectors, which would be a topic I think valid for this wiki, considering their use in school and the expectedly high false positive rates they can produce hurting students' reputation without cause). However it has been tested that the captcha instead prefers to accept users running Chromium web browsers more frequently than alternatives, providing a bias in what should otherwise be an unbiased test. Impacts user experience and priorities users based on their web browser as a possible way to influence users into choosing Chromium.