gr522x

They are definitely both pretty terrible, pick your poison I guess. Apple will gouge your eyes out with overpriced hardware and Alphabet (Google) will spy and you and sell your data. I don't like either, but faced with the choice I'd rather pay more for my phone and avoid Google's surveillance capitalism empire as much as possible. If you don't mind advertisements and privacy isn't important Google is probably a better choice.

Ended my donations to Signal after discovering they choose Google Hosting Services over open source and privacy respecting alternatives.

It's surprising that teenagers are uncomfortable using a surveillance device created by the largest advertising company in the world. Our friends at Alphabet Inc simply want to monitor everything you search for and all your communication because they care and want to keep you safe.

Microsoft has gone decades doing everything they can to ensure Windows is what people think of when they think of computers and its worked.

I agree, I think Google has done an even better job brainwashing people to the point that any search online is considered 'Googling', still makes me cringe to hear ppl unknowingly shill for a corporate monopoly without even consciously knowing they are a walking advert for Alphabet's data harvesting empire.

This is the first you've heard about Google/Youtube censoring people or altering search queries? It must have been a decade ago when they removed Kodi from autocomplete because "it was used by pirates." Even when I disagree with the people they remove, which is most of the time, I am still uncomfortable with a for profit corporation like Alphabet Inc having that much power to decide what people can and cannot see in addition to manipulating search results.

Nearly every content creator I follow talks about not being about to talk about certain issues for fear of being canceled. That's censorship, maybe not Chinese style putting you in jail, but it's still corporate censorship. Google has plenty of defense contracts, as well as contracts with other government agencies. Their previous CEO now leads the Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA) and they work with the defense department on AI and robotics.

A company as untrustworthy and clandestine as Google will make it difficult to connect some dots, but corporation are legally structured to always act in accordance with shareholder interest and Google legally has the right to remove whatever content it wants as a private company. Of course they remove, alter or censor results and content in order to increase profits, their CEO is legally required to act in this way to fulfill the mandate of their position.

Windows 11 is also much better at collecting personal data with improved analytics and Microsoft spyware running under the hood. Not to mention it's superiority at serving advertisements and embedding them in nearly every aspect of the UI.

It's doubtful that Microsoft shareholders have meetings about how to improve the user experience of their OS. I think they are more concerned with extracting every penny they can designing the most efficient backend to harvest data and push ads, kinda like our friends at Alphabet, Microsoft is trying so desperately to emulate.

Google Videos was an alternative to Youtube in the early days, but since Google is too greedy to invest in innovation, it just buys it's competitors, so we don't see them unless we consider community alternatives that can't be bought by Alphabet like Peertube.

Isn't greed inherently evil? Google takes it to a new level as they aren't only a greedy corporation, but a military contractor embedded into the military industrial complex. So, when the US gets involved in a conflict Google profits and they control the flow of information through their search and video platform monopolies. They remove content critical of US military intervention, not to protect national security, but their profits from the defense sector.

Kodi seems like your best bet, it's very accessible across many devices, you could use an older PC, Raspberry Pi or even an Xbox if you wanted to save money by repurposing a device you may already have.

I'll never understand corporate apologists that live to defend the billion dollar companies ruining the Internet. Google is an ad company, but you can't believe they'd alter search queries to sell ads? How could you possibly trust Google after they've been caught illegally sniffing people's Wi-Fi with their Google Maps vehicles, spying on kids in school with Chromebooks and destroying incriminating documents in a federal court case to hide their actions?

Libertarianism is a broad ideology that means different things depending on who you ask. The notion that an authoritarian government can be controlled by billionaires and corporations is certainly viable. Undermining those forces and resisting their control by by not paying for content and controlling your access to said content by having your media library is exercising personal liberty.

The comment I made was quite nuanced and I mentioned that I'm personally more inclined to socialism and liberal views, but hopefully not too ideological that I can't see value in different ideas.

If you care so much about avoiding analytics and advertising why on earth are you "googling" your questions on the world's largest advertising and analytics website?