Re: No free ride
"I have not understood why Google is sometimes excused behaviour that many commentards would think was unacceptable if carried out by Sony, Microsoft, Apple etc."
In my case, it's pretty simple-- I haven't been running a Google operating system for the past 25 years under one paradigm, only to have them suddenly change the rules to "customer be damned, let's serve ourselves instead!" That's what's happened with MS, though.
Apple, Google, and Sony can do whatever they want; it's no concern of mine. I don't run anything from Apple or Sony, and my Android (wifi only) tablet was suspect from the start, so I always kept it figuratively at arms' length, keeping any personal information off of it. It has a modified hosts file to block pretty much all ads (on all apps), so a lot of the spying is blocked, but again, I expect it and behave accordingly. It doesn't matter, since it's just a toy, unlike my PCs.
I expect more from my PCs than I would from a Chromebook, Playstation, or iDevice, though it's notable also that I've never actually owned any of those things, and don't plan to. I chose MS-DOS and then MS Windows all those years ago, and it was based on the rules in place at that time. I was a tiny part of what made Windows and MS what they are today-- without users adopting Windows, it would have been like OS/2. Now, as a reward for all of us people adopting Windows and investing in its ecosystem for decades, we're being plundered by MS, and that's a betrayal many of us will not soon forget.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
