- Yesterday, news broke that Google has been stealth downloading audio listeners onto every computer that runs Chrome, and transmits audio data back to Google. Effectively, this means that Google had taken itself the right to listen to every conversation in every room that runs Chrome somewhere, without any kind of consent from the people eavesdropped on. In official statements, Google shrugged off the practice with what amounts to “we can do that”.
- In official statements, Google shrugged off the practice with what amounts to “we can do that”.
Why are people still using Chrome? Why isn't everyone boycotting Google?
The good news is that they did remove it, at least from chromium. Not OK, Google: Chromium voice extension pulled after spying concerns Old sneaky google, putting their closed source voice crawling software in open source chromium, tsk tsk tsk. I wonder if it would still be there if users hadn't complained. Makes one wonder what's going unnoticed... (To answer your original post questions) I don't know why people still use chrome, and I've been practising a personal boycott of google for a few years.
I don't mind Google having my data. At this point, I'm resigned to the fact that I'm not going to have privacy, so my concern becomes #who has my data. Google has plenty of good reasons to want information, and while I'm not saying there's any guarantee that they're not doing anything nefarious, their track record seems to be pretty good on that front. Additionally, Google leverages the information they have on me to make my life more convenient, from the Google Now cards on my phone to the targeted ads which are generally more relevant to me than generic ads.
I think it's important to remember that privacy is not a boolean, but a spectrum; there are varying degrees of privacy. Some of the privacy we lost, we'll probably never regain, because I don't see drones and cameras disappearing any time soon; but we don't have to resign ourselves to the fact that Google can remotely install a microphone in our bedroom - we still have a say in that.
You're saying you're fine with Google indiscriminately recording private conversations that you have in your own home? I can sort of understand being okay with them knowing your online history (though even that shouldn't be allowed), but why would you be fine with them recording your conversations?