patrick.net

https://reclaimthenet.org/obama-admin-ftc-google-2013/

Obama administration refused to act on 2013 FTC report that proved Google’s wildly anticompetitive behavior

Google’s march toward overwhelming search, digital ad, and mobile OS market dominance was visible from orbit to everyone but the most casual technology observer as early as in 2013; but the Obama administration Federal Trade Commission (FTC) experts rejected it.

It was in January of that year that they decided not to sue Google after conducting a probe, launched in 2011, into the giant’s monopolistic behavior. To make matters worse, the FTC of the time neither disclosed the details of its probe, nor explained the reasons behind the decision.

Their hundreds of millions of secret dossiers on all American citizens, and the billions more on the rest of the world, ensure that Google will continue to get to do whatever the hell it wants to.

It's like the old East German secret police, the Stasi.

Sent to a European friend who wonders why I won't use Google at all, ever:

Do you remember the East German Stasi? (Staatssicherheitsdienst)

How did they control everyone?

There was a secret file on everyone where they accumulated embarrassing or legally actionable details about them.

That's Google, only a million times worse now.

Patrick says

Google is working on getting your browser itself to directly betray your browsing to them so they can sell that personal info.

Never use Chrome! Try Brave browser instead.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-idea

FLoC is meant to be a new way to make your browser do the profiling that third-party trackers used to do themselves: in this case, boiling down your recent browsing activity into a behavioral label, and then sharing it with websites and advertisers.

I've enabled the advertisements through Brave browser and you earn Basic Attention Tokens while doing so. After a month of using Brave, I have almost 1 BAT in my crypto wallet and the value of it jumped 50% this week to above $1. I have hardly noticed ads as they are very non-invasive and more importantly, not annoying the piss out of me. If people keep switching over to Brave, I think this system has legs as it allows users to earn part of the ad revenue and more importantly, cuts facebook, google, and the likes out of the game. I'm actually going to go on Gemini tomorrow and buy $100 worth of Basic Attention Tokens to support the system. If people continue to adopt it, the value of it will rise. I'm a big fan of Brave and after 20 years of using firefox, I was happy to switch over after Mozillas bullshit woketard tweets. I didn't realize the founder of Mozilla was the one who started Brave.

Patrick says

Google is working on getting your browser itself to directly betray your browsing to them so they can sell that personal info.

Yes, and they're already spinning it as they will no longer use cross-site cookies to track you... they'll just get the browser itself to track you

Patrick says

Google is working on getting your browser itself to directly betray your browsing to them so they can sell that personal info.

Never use Chrome! Try Brave browser instead.

https://blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/privacy/2021/04/millions-of-chrome-users-quietly-added-to-googles-floc-pilot/

Millions of Chrome users quietly added to Google’s FLoC pilot

I'm using Duck duck go...that ok?

I think it is. Supposedly they do not track you at all. Hard to know for sure.

I tried https://swisscows.com/ for a while, but found it slower with a bit worse results.

It seems like trying to not be tracked would make them want to track you more.

That's another good reason all of us should try to avoid being tracked. Make it harder on invasive organizations like Google.

Check out the difference in search results for "riots today" between Google and Duck Duck Go.

socal2 says

Check out the difference in search results for "riots today" between Google and Duck Duck Go.

This is happening because you misspelled "peaceful protests" in your Google search. =))

I’ve been using DuckDuckGo for years and found it reliable and also better results for anything political.

Eric Holder says

Duckduckgo is using Google.

Got a link showing that?

I find it hard to believe, given that Google would have a big motive to cancel any contract with them.

Patrick says

Eric Holder says

Duckduckgo is using Google.

Got a link showing that?

I find it hard to believe, given that Google would have a big motive to cancel any contract with them.

Looks like I got it wrong and they are indeed using their own search engine. False memory. Probably should delete the orig message and the replies to not spread the fake news.

Eric Holder says

False memory.

Not entirely. There is such a site but I am having memory problems myself. It's basically a layer between you and google so they can't see tie searches back to you. I do recall searching side by side and the results differed.

@just_passing_through

I think Duckduckgo does not use Google at all.

Can you find any link showing that it does?

It's the same exact results Patrick.
The only way I would say they don't use Google, would be if the search results were as organically rich as all search engines used to be.

Why the limited useless results if they built their own system?

Patrick says

@just_passing_through

I think Duckduckgo does not use Google at all.

Can you find any link showing that it does?

It wasn't DDG that did this as far as I recall.

This is what I was thinking of:

https://www.startpage.com/

Startpage (previously called IXquick) is a metasearch engine based in the Netherlands. It takes its results from Google and delivers them to the user. As such, it essentially acts as a proxy for users to view Google search results without being tracked by the company. Startpage was recently crowned the best search engine available, even beating out Google.

The service doesn’t track any of your information, including your search queries. The short version of its privacy policy reads:

Startpage.com doesn’t log or share your personal information. We don’t track you. We don’t profile you. Period.

Right, I remember that startpage.com is just a filter for Google.

I'm still pretty confident that DDG is not that, but its own index.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/google-leads-us-tech-giants-effort-to-support-work-authorisation-for-spouses-of-h-1b-visa-holders/articleshow/82653910.cms

WASHINGTON: Google is leading a determined effort by US tech giants to support a programme that gives work authorisation for spouses of those possessing H-1B foreign work visas, the most sought after among Indian IT professionals. Goggle is joined by 30 other companies to support the H-4 EAD ((Employment Authorisation Document) programme. An H-4 visa is issued by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to immediate family members (spouse and children under 21 years of age) of the H-1B visa holders. The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. Technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.

"Google is proud to support our nation's immigrants. We joined 30 other companies to protect the H-4 EAD programme which spurs innovation, creates jobs and opportunities, and helps families," Google CEO Sundar Pichai tweeted. Google on Friday filed a legal brief in a lawsuit called Save Jobs USA vs US Department of Homeland Security.

Google hires foreigners to drive down US wages.

https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-government-adviser-cummings-google-lockdown/

CEO and co-founder of Alphabet Inc. subsidiary DeepMind Demis Hassabis allegedly played a big role in convincing the UK government to ditch its initial COVID-strategy, the herd immunity approach. Herd immunity is an approach used in previous pandemics, where, instead of lockdowns, the disease is allowed to spread so that a large portion of the population become immune.

In a testimony before the UK parliament’s Health and Social Care Committee and the Science and Technology Committee, the Prime Minister’s chief advisor Dominic Cummings detailed how Hassabis and others convinced him to ditch the initial official government’s plan to handle the pandemic.

In the early months of 2020, just as the virus was starting to spread in the UK, the government’s plan was to limit, but not stop, the spread of the virus in the summer, hoping to achieve herd immunity by fall...

Gosh, I wonder if that could have been influenced by Google's self-interest in keeping people at home so that they would spend more time on the internet, specifically on Google, boosting Google revenue...

https://reclaimthenet.org/google-bans-dr-vladimir-zelenko-from-sharing-google-docs/

"Your" Google docs are not yours at all.

They exist at the pleasure of Google, and if you say something Google doesn't like, they disappear.

https://www.euronews.com/2021/06/07/google-fined-220m-by-french-competition-watchdog-over-online-advertising-market

Google has been fined €220 million by France's competition authority for favouring its own services in online advertising.

The tech giant was found to have given "preferential treatment" to Google's own "proprietary technologies" in digital adverts, the authority said.

Google has not contested the facts and the fine was agreed as part of a settlement procedure, it added.

It's something, but not enough by a long shot.

Google's revenue was 181.69 billion last year, so this is a fine of (0.8169 x 220000000) / (181.69 x 10^9) = one tenth of one percent of Google's revenue, pretty close to nothing.

https://timcast.com/news/google-founder-has-new-zealand-residency/

Patrick says

https://timcast.com/news/google-founder-has-new-zealand-residency/

I read a lot of the tech elite have been buying residency and homes out there the past 5 years or so.

Just downloaded Brave, I like it. Keeps blocking creepy things that google does. I love it.

Scary thought though... all Google has to do is throw money at Brave/DDG and they'll own them. Google has more money than US government. Only thing that can stop Google is conviction of other people against evil.

If Brave turns corrupt, then we move on to the next browser that doesn't.

Patrick says

If Brave turns corrupt, then we move on to the next browser that doesn't.

i like it. it's kind of crazy. there is a counter on the right side when i visit a website how much crap it blocks. its a lot on any news website, i visited them all just to check it out. all advertising is like fucking cancer... spreads faster than covid.

If a company uses gmail for its own business, it's time for their customers to leave.

SumatraBosch says

If a company uses gmail for its own business, it's time for their customers to leave.

It's certainly time for their investors to leave.

What company in its right mind would turn over all of its internal communications to Google?

Remember when Google's motto was "Do no Evil"?
Then they decided, that dropping acid would make their company smarter. But I think they all dropped so much Acid, they became demented and deranged. Just like those Hippy Cults in the 70's that took hallucinogenics and other hard drugs, to make them one with the Universe. Then went on a murderous killing spree.
I think that is what happened to Google.
There's just no way in hell, sane normal people can reconcile. Just how they took the smartest thing man has ever invented. That was so brilliant, it made everyone with access to a computer and the internet, capable of answering questions that only scholars and geniuses could answer before Google.
Google was so good, it was becoming humanities second brain. Now a Google search will return what ever Jim Acosta believes cretins like us should and should not be privy to.

When I think of a Google meeting, I think of Charles Manson holding court with his murderous drug addled Ne'er-do-wells, singing code in a guitar ditty, for their next marauding escapade.

Tenpoundbass says

Just like those Hippy Cults in the 70's that took hallucinogenics and other hard drugs, to make them one with the Universe.

I dropped acid several times in the 70's. I saw it fuck up several people permanently.

I realized that hallucinogens merely mess up the signals from your sense perception to your brain. All the colors, movements, insights were really just the drugs messing with your senses. That is no way to live life.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/state-legislators-grappling-to-address-big-tech-censorship_3941813.html?utm_source=patrick.net&utm_medium=patrick.net&utm_campaign=patrick.net

State Legislators Grappling to Address Big Tech Censorship
BY EMEL AKAN August 10, 2021

States are busy looking for ways to curb Big Tech’s outsized power as Google, Facebook, and Twitter have ramped up censorship in recent months.

It's good to have another level of power, the states, looking at ways of limiting tech tyrant power.

In fact, it should primarily be the responsibility of states, becase powers not Constitutionally granted to the federal government belong to States or the people.

Patrick says

It's good to have another level of power, the states, looking at ways of limiting tech tyrant power.

Let me translate for you:
"Hey big pockets Google, we need some campaign cash over here, plus find a few jobs in your organization for our nieces/nephews."

Ah, no doubt you're right about that.

"Lovely business you got there, would be a shame if anything were to happen to it..."

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/google-employees-face-pay-cuts-25-working-home-permanently-leaked-salary-data

Google Employees Face Pay Cuts Up To 25% For Working From Home Permanently: Leaked Salary Data

For Goolag employees working in a city with high cost of living (Bay Area), it then makes sense to take the opportunity to move somewhere cheap. Even with 25% pay cut, they'll still make out like bandits.

Never understood why tech employees have to live in SF Bay when everyone can work remote.

Oh wait, nm....

"Our compensation packages have always been determined by location, and we always pay at the top of the local market based on where an employee works from,"

That's just idiotic, but typical of the company's greed.

https://www.oann.com/fmr-google-employee-reveals-company-changed-news-algorithm-to-target-president-trump/

He also explained how the process worked during an interview with the Epoch Times. Vorhies went on to clarify how these classifiers were trained by people with biases based on what they believed to be fake or misleading news. The classifiers allow Google to automatically filter out content they believe goes against the truth and their political narrative.

Vorhies added Google’s algorithm attached new negative stories about Trump onto old ones in order to keep them trending at the top of their search results longer. He concluded by exposing Google’s attempt to rewrite its’ operating code to prevent many in the U.S. from participating in the national discussion.