I'm sure the Google doesn't do anything without a reason and to be profitable.
I just naturally distrust the smartphones. I have to assume that the Google is spying on me, like Amazon and everyone that has a connected device. My personal compters have no A/V for that reason.
On this unit at this work station I have been doing some hardcore studying of what is stored by browsers; 'entries' / 'places' / 'favicons' / and so many others. And yes, that favicons file has information about where a person has been with their browser.
I have not had the time to study what might be available to an outsider about what I do with the Android device my family got me when I went into the hospital for 6 months for a relapse, but from what little reading I've had time to do, I assume the Android device is another gold mine of info for some corporate section that is tasked to track my activities.
Frankly, the first time I seriously dug into what the browser files had stored about my online activity I was surprised. Even more surprised when I found out that using the easy to see tool for "cleaning" browser data was really not cleaning out enough. Not even close to cleaning out enough.
I used to be a Google fan, and even did volunteer work for them and also helped with some research for them back when GMail was first launched. Yes, I was one who was given an 'invite' and that was because I was an employee admin on a rather large site back then. But I have gotten very worried about many things related to what Google has become. I guess my first concerns started right on one of Google's sites some years ago and the management folks started letting me have some freedom to post those concerns to Google faithfuls, but they wiped that slate clean about 5 or 6 years ago. I am not remembering the exact time as I type this, but the Google upper-management really shut us down back a bit. I still have quite an archive of those days when we had more freedom to post our thoughts about their operations, but as of late my only contact is with a special group of mostly former Google helpers. Well, some family in the U.S. still has contacts with upper-management/executives because of past stock ownership.
Elected representatives in many nations have not been paying close enough attention to such like Google. And it's getting harder and harder for elected officials to deal with the situation.
But enough of these thoughts for now. My fifth post on this site and I am not yet so sure many folks in this Community are any longer really engaged in these thought processes. I'll wait and see if participation in this Community starts to improve because I post something one of you really hates. Or really loves. The "really hates" makes for a better exchange of views, though.
