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Posts: 3,524 | Thanked: 2,958 times | Joined on Oct 2007 @ Delta Quadrant
#20
Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
For those who bought Maemo devices because they offer freedom, these aren't good news.

Sure, MS isn't "open" as in "open source". But at least they used to offer a relatively open platform (slowly changing now) that allowed people to have control over their data and hardware.

Google's Android, while offering open code in theory, is a much more dangerous threat to freedom than MS. They pretend to be open, but in fact encourage proprietary licensing and discourage GPLed code. They take all the data they can get, your mails, your contacts, your appointments, your documents, your searches, your location data and so on.

I wouldn't go "ha ha ha" if Google really gains more influence than it already has and overtakes MS in this business.
I never really understood the general attitude toward Google collecting information. If you take the time to read practically any privacy policy on the web (yes, including this site) you will see that they all allow the capture your personal information and to use that data at the discretion of the sites owner. Go ahead, take a look.

But this is old hat. Companies have been doing this for years to better market products. This includes government, enterprise, not-for profit, and extends all the way down to small retailers. All (successful) organizations collect and analyse information (even if its just receipts) about their customers and exploit this information to make more money.

This certainly includes MS who has proven themselves to have far less scruples than should be legal.

Incidentally, the company that you claim is worse than MS, Google, is also ironically one of the ONLY companies that actually allows you to remove your collected data, and even provides a user-friendly interface to do it. They even promote transparency by making it easier for lay-people to read their policies!

To think that MS is somehow a more responsible holder of your information is straight lunacy.

- Capt'n

Last edited by Capt'n Corrupt; 2012-10-28 at 23:49.
 

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