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Google users locked out after 15 years' use

businessinsider.com

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Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#711

Post by hilbert42 »

sumtechguy wrote: post #352
hilbert42 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to know if that was the initial plan from the outset or that it evolved along the way.

I think they started off at a good spot. Then realized they wanted more control of the data going through them. Then they realized they wanted to control the way the data flowed in an ideological way. It is a natural reaction to someone who gets a decent amount of wealth. They think 'how can I make the world a better place'. But the mistake many make is not realizing that their way is not the best way for others. Som…

Absolutely, with AOL the paradigm shifted and it couldn't change quickly enough. Google will likely predominate until another shift of similar magnitude occurs.

Seems it's impossible to make predictions in this area with any certainty.

Remember, Bill Gates was paranoid about this and about Microsoft getting caught out for similar reasons especially so around the time Windows 95 came out. Even so, MS missed the boat with search, smartphones and Android.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#712

Post by robomartin »

bsanr2 wrote: post #613
robomartin wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, I think, is one of the most important things legislators need to look at going forward as they dig into the practices of companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. The massive paradigm shift that occurred once these companies grabbed prominence in commerce is to go from a system where humans interacted with humans in business-to-business commerce to solve problems to a cold, hard, heartless and decidedly dan…

Taking the meta-view: the cynical take is that you only care because you and people you know are in the crosshairs. If you feel that there's a role for government here, perhaps you should be more considerate of a role for government in areas you'd previously thought it unwarranted; clearly, it's impossible for any one person to have personal experience for all the ways people can be screwed over, and for which the on…

I am not personally impacted, I just know of people who are.

Government isn’t the solution to every problem. Caring or not caring is irrelevant. Reaching for a government-level solution isn’t a good thing, just have a look at nations where government plays a much larger role.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#713

Post by mbirth »

Tor3 wrote: post #26
grishka wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mail is one of the things I'm most worried about. Use an IMAP client. It would keep all your mail on your device, so at least you don't have to rely on having uninterrupted access to your account for your old conversations. Actually, I'm surprised just how many people use email through web interfaces for some reason.

Search and find old emails.. that's where gmail works. I guess that's why I keep using it. For work I use Thunderbird (the best of the bad alternatives), and search is horrible and extremely slow (and usually never find what I want to find). If I had something which was as easy as gmail for handling tens of thousands of emails I would switch.

This! My biggest issue migrating away from GMail is that I’ve archived 8GB of mails from the last 20 years there. If anybody has a suggestion for a self-hosted email archive with fulltext search, I’m all ears.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#714

Post by mbirth »

tarruda wrote: post #453

I've saw quite a few similar stories over the past years and this left me very scared. I've been a heavy user of google services for more than 15 years. For some months now (maybe a year?) I've been trying to reduce dependency on google services and apps. It is a slow process, but I hope to get it done in the next year or so. Meanwhile I try to use google takeout as much as possible to keep up to date backups of my d…

> Does anyone have a suggestion of an email provider I can use with custom domain?

I’ve set it up the other way around. All mail gets sent to a cheap VPS that has qmail rules to accept all aliases from a text file. This way, whenever I sign up for a new service, I just add the service’s name to the text file and suddenly have “servicename@mydomain” as an email address. Same for compromised mail - just remove the entry from the file and add another one, change email address with the compromised service (or cancel the account) and you won’t be bothered by spam anymore. All addresses not in that text file go to some local CatchAll folder I only check occasionally.

All mail that’s passing this filter is getting a DKIM and/or DMARC signature and forwarded to my GMail account. But I can easily have it sent to a completely different account in a matter of minutes. And the email provider doesn’t have to support custom domains.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#715

Post by tripzilch »

vkou wrote: post #642
hedora wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past, the advertiser would likely to tell that to the people selling ad space. Then, they’d suffer political blowback for being anti-LGBT. It sounds like Google is laundering third party behavior that is further dividing our society. Perhaps advertisers should be forced (by the government, on all algorithmic platforms) to publish their targeting criteria.

> In the past, the advertiser would likely to tell that to the people selling ad space. Prior to ad networks that automatically match advertisers to display space, yes. The thing is, though, prior to ad networks, there were a lot fewer advertisers who were interested in spending time and money on doing this song and dance with a slew of tiny web properties. Most of them wouldn't even bother. You can have no ad networ…

Can we have no ad networks please?

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#716

Post by bsanr2 »

robomartin wrote: post #712
bsanr2 wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking the meta-view: the cynical take is that you only care because you and people you know are in the crosshairs. If you feel that there's a role for government here, perhaps you should be more considerate of a role for government in areas you'd previously thought it unwarranted; clearly, it's impossible for any one person to have personal experience for all the ways people can be screwed over, and for which the on…

I am not personally impacted, I just know of people who are. Government isn’t the solution to every problem. Caring or not caring is irrelevant. Reaching for a government-level solution isn’t a good thing, just have a look at nations where government plays a much larger role.

Sweden?

The issue is that so many of the people who say "government isn't the solution to every problem," really mean, "government isn't the solution to any problems except the ones I personally can't buy myself out of." At some point we have to realize that issues that are substantially widespread or entrenched and mature/understood should probably be nationalized at their core, with the opportunity for innovation left to the margins. Trying to extract profit from healthcare or infrastructure in particular seems quite cynical and prone to unfortunate consequences in the name of chasing lower costs.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#717

Post by lima »

wegs wrote: post #686
lima wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can unlock the bootloader on any Chromebook and install a regular Linux distribution on it.

You can do this on SOME Chromebooks. It'd be great if you could do this on any Chromebook! There's a whole pile of AC700 Chromebooks around, with no upgrade path as far as I know, at least if you don't want to be p4wn3d.

I thought developer mode was a hard requirement?

Including AC700: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-f...

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#718

Post by wegs »

lima wrote: post #717
wegs wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do this on SOME Chromebooks. It'd be great if you could do this on any Chromebook! There's a whole pile of AC700 Chromebooks around, with no upgrade path as far as I know, at least if you don't want to be p4wn3d.

I thought developer mode was a hard requirement? Including AC700: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-f...

The AC700 does have a developer mode. That doesn't mean there's any Linux distribution which will install on it.

For a while, there were, but they disappeared, and now it's a web of 404s and obsolete documents. Most recommended chrubuntu, but (1) that relies on obsolete ChromeOS components, which introduce security issues (2) someone said that's now dead too.

I'll see if Chromium builds for it. Thanks for the pointer. There's a lot of AC700's out there.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#719

Post by robomartin »

bsanr2 wrote: post #716
robomartin wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not personally impacted, I just know of people who are. Government isn’t the solution to every problem. Caring or not caring is irrelevant. Reaching for a government-level solution isn’t a good thing, just have a look at nations where government plays a much larger role.

Sweden? The issue is that so many of the people who say "government isn't the solution to every problem," really mean, "government isn't the solution to any problems except the ones I personally can't buy myself out of." At some point we have to realize that issues that are substantially widespread or entrenched and mature/understood should probably be nationalized at their core, with the opportunity for innovation l…

Sweden is far from a government-controlled society.

The problem with people in the US who have convinced themselves that more government is a good thing is simple: Ignorance.

I mean that as a statement of fact, not a pejorative.

Nobody who has ever lived under heavy government control supports these ideas. The only way they gain support is by pushing the fantasy of big government vs. the reality.

Context: I have lived under those conditions. The average American has no clue.

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