Positive features
Not a mandatory brain implant.
There are still alternatives.
Google's Chromebooks are about to undergo an overhaul that puts the Chocolate Factory's creepy, predictive search tech – Google Now – at the heart of the firm's OS. François Beaufort, who describes himself as Mountain View's "Happiness Evangelist", said that Chrome OS fans would soon be able to access a beta version of the …
Rubbish. You're creeped out by a search engine remembering your searches and history? Delete them, Google offers you that functionality in the dashboard.
Advertisers have been collecting things, using cookies of various types for more than a decade. Google is actually letting you be a user of that data too, and giving you the ability to remove a good deal of it. If it scares you, GO NUKE YOUR DATA.
The every hotel analogy is off. It's your concierge following you to each one you go to.
>Rubbish. You're creeped out by a search engine ...
Um ... it seems as if you see Google as a company offering just a search engine. In fact it is really the largest ad pusher on the internet and this is where it gets its revenue. To target its ads it collects profiles on internet users. A part of this is one's search history on Google search and, in general, whatever they can get from their other services (such as gmail, Youtube, Chrome (browser), Android devices, Chromebook, cloud ...). This might be legal even in the EU (*), what is illegal (in the EU, at least) is their collecting (and making use of) data of browsing habits with Google Analytics, G+ buttons, Google Maps and of course the ads they distribute (and possibly otherwise) without consent - or even knowledge, in most cases - of the internet user.
(*) Then again it might not, because their TOS is so wide open to intepretation that actual user consent to any of this is suspect (and possibly because their dominant market position with search and Android).
The concierge talks about you with other hotel staff. He tells the cleaners that you're a bad tipper, they tell him you leave hair on the soap. You walk through the lobby and can't look people in the eye because you know they know you know they know your secrets. But when a computer knows where you live all it does is realise you're in a hotel and might be interested in some local attractions. When the Value Judgement engine goes live, THAT'S when you need to feel creeped out.
Sent from my Chromebook
Pretty sure...... the privacy-invading part is actually in the Google Cloud where it ties everything you do or ever have done on any Google property anyway into a sort of database. The bit on the Chromebook / Android device / iOS Device simply returns information from the database.
Where have you been for the last ten years? They haven't suddenly become creepy overnight, their entire business model involves spying on you - there is barely a website in the world now that doesn't use Google hosted content which only exists so that they can track you everywhere you go.
"They haven't suddenly become creepy overnight, their entire business model involves spying on you"
Ah, but it's only recently that people have started waking up to this fact and ignoring the Google faithful who keep trying to reassure them that "everything's fine, no, no, you can always choose not to use Google, it's all in your best interest, blame Apple, blame Microsoft, blame the NSA..." etc., etc.
Chrome mobile is a bugger for this.
I start typing in the url I want - yes I'm old-fashioned. Chrome pops up some random meaningless shite url which bears no relation and now I can't see how far I've typed my url as there's no shading or difference to tell me which are my characters and which is Google bollocks.
Every bloody system these days wants to second guess you. Just sod off, I know what I want.