Wow, this whole document is a gold mine…
indeed
It’s easy to just blame Google for this, but Facebook and Microshaft are also very well aware of the profitability in exploiting their users, and likely didn’t need much convincing at all.
Instead of the Google search engine, try Qwant (as advised in https://privacyguides.org/providers/search-engines/)
I’ve actually been using Qwant for a few months, and it’s pretty decent. I find results are a lot closer to what I expect than DuckDuckGo.
I guess this is what happens when “The Invisible Hand” is left unattended for too long :D
While collecting personalized user data is obviously important to all of these companies, is it really a vital “feature” for Microsoft? Google and Facebook are mainly ad companies, so the use case is obvious, but what about Microsoft?
Note: I’m not talking about telemetry. While I have objections over that, I understand whg they are used.
All large companies realize that user data has value whether it’s their primary asset or not. User data is a big source of revenue that all of these companies are well positioned to exploit.
And Apple knew about it:
The manner in which Google has actively worked with Big Tech competitors to undermine users’ privacy further illustrates Google’s pretextual privacy concerns. For example, in a closed-door meeting on August 6, 2019 between the five Big Tech companies—including Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft—Google discussed forestalling consumer privacy efforts.
