Gootube

[jujube]

"You will no longer be able to sign in to YouTube without a Google Account."

well, they tried asking nicely before, but now you don't have a choice. i have a google account but this still bugs the crap out of me. i'm gonna go sign up at dailymotion instead. forgive me if i don't respond to comments you leave on my youtube page or to my videos.

i'm debating going google-free completely (if that's still possible). no more gmail, no google search, definitely no google-tablet-pc-phone-whateverthehell. i won't even use Chromium anymore (google Chrome is nothing more than Chromium+spyware) just to get as far away from the goo as possible. i don't care if firefox is slower. i'm tired of google ads and their ever-growing internet monopoly.

[Blink]

If you liked chrome, you might want to try other webkit browsers like Safari which render webpages similarly. Also, Opera is a really good & fast alternative that also just started having extension support.

[Caithness]

Jujube, if you're looking for an alternative to Google search that's not Bing, you can try duckduckgo.com.

[DrPete]

https://ssl.scroogle.org/ might interest you if you're willing to compromise on "google-free", it's basically searches google for you and returns the results, so no tracking silliness

[iphys]

Google scares me, but it's pretty hard to get by without it, so I guess I'll continue using it and hope the day never comes where Google reveals its true evil purpose.

[Rosti_LFC]

Meh. When Google takes over the world I'll just make sure I'm on their side and not one of the infidels.

[Magnanimous]

To be fair, Google gives away a crapload of their money to charity. They're taking over the world, but it's the kind of world I'd want to live in.

[XaeL]

Dude google definitely doing something evil.

Their slogan is "do no evil" how suss is that eh?

[Anonymous]

http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

basically google chrome but has some minor differences.

[myndzi]

I thought this was going to be about porn.


As for "spyware" - that's rather bull. Other browsers have support for search suggestions as well, and to the best of my knowledge, it was the search suggestion (while entering a URL) feature that is what set a bunch of people off about this in the first place. It's not really a big deal at all.

As for "do no evil" - this is quite frequently misquoted. The actual text is "don't be evil", which has a somewhat different meaning. For additional context, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil

For any nerd looking at the company, it seems pretty obvious that Google has an excess of brilliant people who are interested in making cool things that do stuff better. Often times they don't think about how these things will be perceived by others, and equally often these things get blown way out of proportion.

Being evil is about intent, not accident or oversight. I don't see Google as particularly "evil."

[jujube]

some funny stuff and good info, thanks.

i guess youtube was bought by google in 2006 so this wasn't a recent takeover haha. so why now do they require you to have a google account to access your youtube account? seems like the next step in privacy invasion. maybe too many yousers were blocking tracking cookies (just a thought).

i've been reading about google's business practices and they seem to have a sketchy history. they're definitely going above and beyond what it takes to run a successful company. examples range from the unethical (manipulating page ranks of websites for being seen as competitors) to the illegal (decrypting and recording private communications). whether google is a front for a US government agency or an independent entity is irrelevant as far as i can tell, because there's nothing to stop the US gov from demanding google turn over said info under law. if the US didn't appreciate what google was doing then the company wouldn't exist anymore.

check these out if you want to learn more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google
https://privacyinternational.org/search/apa...r_search/google

and some useful tips for protecting your privacy:
http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/searcheng...rivacytips.html

i'm not trying to scare anybody but i think privacy is an important issue. corporations/governments don't need to know everything about what you're doing all the time. if you respect your own privacy it doesn't mean you're doing something wrong or hiding something. by the way dailymotion has more google ads than youtube  but maybe this was the only way dm could continue its service without being systematically eliminated. at least you don't need to link your dm account to your google account. i'm not suggesting everybody should leave youtube; it's just a personal choice i made.

myndzi- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(sof...m_Google_Chrome
by spyware i meant what google tacks onto the open-source chromium in their google chrome release. they do also add adobe flash, but that's something any chromium user can get directly from adobe.

[exchliore]

some funny stuff and good info, thanks.

i guess youtube was bought by google in 2006 so this wasn't a recent takeover haha. so why now do they require you to have a google account to access your youtube account? seems like the next step in privacy invasion. maybe too many yousers were blocking tracking cookies (just a thought).

Actually, this is the correct step to take. It doesn't make sense to have a youtube account and a google account when it's all owned by one company, so they merged it. The idea is that you'll only need 1 google login to access all of your google services (gmail, calendar, etc.). It's not sketchy at all, but a good and strong design decision. If you don't want to link all of your accounts, then make separate google accounts for each service (pretty much the same thing). I'm only surprised they didn't push this earlier.

i've been reading about google's business practices and they seem to have a sketchy history. they're definitely going above and beyond what it takes to run a successful company. examples range from the unethical (manipulating page ranks of websites for being seen as competitors) to the illegal (decrypting and recording private communications). whether google is a front for a US government agency or an independent entity is irrelevant as far as i can tell, because there's nothing to stop the US gov from demanding google turn over said info under law. if the US didn't appreciate what google was doing then the company wouldn't exist anymore.

check these out if you want to learn more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google
https://privacyinternational.org/search/apa...r_search/google

and some useful tips for protecting your privacy:
http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/searcheng...rivacytips.html

My biggest gripe with your sources is that they're weak. These are anti-google pages with pretty weak arguments against a company that's been around since 1998. Not only are they weak arguments for google being evil, but most, if not all of them, are don't care cases (aka. trivially unimportant). If you look at news releases, google has done far more in terms of protecting your privacy than any other company out there. And some real strong sources that refute your sources could be:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/jud...ch-queries.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html

Let's face it, if google is seen as evil for just this little bit of propaganda, what do you think of other tech companies out there? I'm not sure what you're trying to make a point of here, but maybe you should look at every other service you use as well, instead of just google.

i'm not trying to scare anybody but i think privacy is an important issue. corporations/governments don't need to know everything about what you're doing all the time. if you respect your own privacy it doesn't mean you're doing something wrong or hiding something. by the way dailymotion has more google ads than youtube  but maybe this was the only way dm could continue its service without being systematically eliminated. at least you don't need to link your dm account to your google account. i'm not suggesting everybody should leave youtube; it's just a personal choice i made.

myndzi- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(sof...m_Google_Chrome
by spyware i meant what google tacks onto the open-source chromium in their google chrome release. they do also add adobe flash, but that's something any chromium user can get directly from adobe.

I think you're overreacting about leaving youtube since again, it's just a smarter design decision and hardly invasive at all (make another account). I have found some privacy issues with Chrome (specifics could be a 10-20 page writeup and erroneous for this thread), but I also have the choice not to use it and it's not as if it's a major/competing browser. If you want privacy/security issues, then take a look at Internet Explorer.

I'm not a big fan of any big brother or nanny state policies, but it seems like this is where most countries in the world are headed. I do like my privacy, but it seems like it is everyone else who doesn't respect it (not just the government and big corporations).

If you really want to get into a big debate of big corporations and privacy, then maybe you should pay more attention to things around you. My personal phone number and information hasn't been distributed to random people because of the google or the government. It's been distributed by people in this community. I still get harassment calls about once a month from blocked and untraceable numbers. If you want to point a finger at others and criticize them, why don't you focus on this community first?

[Edit: in terms of moving the topic off of me. Why don't you look at the general consensus of this forum and how people think of personal privacy and property? Then maybe, you can compare that with google.]

[Rosti_LFC]

i guess youtube was bought by google in 2006 so this wasn't a recent takeover haha. so why now do they require you to have a google account to access your youtube account? seems like the next step in privacy invasion. maybe too many yousers were blocking tracking cookies (just a thought).

Lol, "next step in privacy invasion"?! It makes financial sense to them. There's no point running two lists of people when they can easily combine them into one. They can almost certainly produce the figures for what percentage of YouTube users also own a separate Google account, and my guessing would be that it's pretty high, and it makes sense for them to force the remainder to shift over and keep their database costs down.

That, and the fact that they're just bullying customers to fit into their business model, the same as any other large company does. It's the same reason that phones get locked down to use proprietary software. There's nothing particularly evil about it (especially in this case, where you've not lost functionality). Most people already have a Google account who are on YouTube, so most people aren't going to complain, and it force the rest of the YouTube users who don't have one to switch onto a full Google account, and perhaps they'll use the rest of the services Google have to offer and provide them with more revenue.

It's quite a clear switch in business terms, and it's one that will almost certainly reduce their costs and increase their revenue. Frankly I'm surprised it's taken them the best part of five years to get around to it. It's not evil - it's just sensible business.

And IMO, internet privacy is overrated anyway. Why should anyone care if Google tracks your web history or internet searches? All it's going to be used for is to be fed into algorithms to make their search more effective as a whole, and also for bringing up results that you want. There are hundreds of millions of people who use Google, and Google don't have enough employees for people to be sifting through exactly what you've been doing on the internet. If no human eyes are going to look at the data which they quietly store about you, then it's hardly a significant invasion of privacy. It's not like they're harvesting your bank account passwords or anything.

[jujube]

Actually, this is the correct step to take. It doesn't make sense to have a youtube account and a google account when it's all owned by one company, so they merged it. The idea is that you'll only need 1 google login to access all of your google services (gmail, calendar, etc.). It's not sketchy at all, but a good and strong design decision. If you don't want to link all of your accounts, then make separate google accounts for each service (pretty much the same thing). I'm only surprised they didn't push this earlier.

Lol, "next step in privacy invasion"?! It makes financial sense to them. There's no point running two lists of people when they can easily combine them into one. They can almost certainly produce the figures for what percentage of YouTube users also own a separate Google account, and my guessing would be that it's pretty high, and it makes sense for them to force the remainder to shift over and keep their database costs down.

yeah maybe they should have merged accounts long ago, and made it more obvious that the site was owned and run by google. maybe their sound business decision was to allow the site to grow without making it totally obvious they were in control. now that it's far and away the leading video streaming site, and users have put a lot of time and work into their channels, google is no longer afraid of any backlash by making their presence more obvious. i'll be more careful from now on in checking out site ownership and policies before i get so involved in another site.

and i'm not going to inconvenience myself by creating multiple google accounts in an attempt to take advantage of their services anonymously, especially if i'm fed up with the company already.

If you look at news releases, google has done far more in terms of protecting your privacy than any other company out there.

i had heard of things like keywords in email being used to target ads http://mail.google.com/mail/help/about_pri...#scanning_email and complaints from many countries about private data collected for StreetView http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10278068, so i don't trust the company, and it bothered me even more when they required me to use a google account to login to youtube. if i had known they owned youtube i would have left already. now that i've learned even more about google i'm completely satisfied with my decision.

you guys talk about the good they've done with providing convenient services, and that's fine, but to me it doesn't negate their shoot-first-ask-questions-later pattern of conduct. i don't believe they were unaware they had collected data illegally from 30 countries before they figured out the problem. sorry. they can apologize and cooperate with investigators as a sound business decision though.

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]My biggest gripe with your sources is that they're weak.[/quote]
sources from the wikipedia article i linked include the new york times, LA times, bbc, cnn, and reuters. privacy international is a non-profit global privacy watchdog and trusted source of the bbc.

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]And some real strong sources that refute your sources could be:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/jud...ch-queries.html[/quote]
no.
[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html[/quote]
well looks like google needs a more robust automated system for fairly ranking pages.

that and they need to stop worrying about moms seeking advice on raising their children.
[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]These are anti-google pages with pretty weak arguments against a company that's been around since 1998. Not only are they weak arguments for google being evil, but most, if not all of them, are don't care cases (aka. trivially unimportant).[/quote]
http://www.wsgr.com/attorneys/NEWBIOS/PDFs...tart_google.pdf (page 3) it may seem trivial to you but it's offensive to me on many levels.

[exchliore]

yeah maybe they should have merged accounts long ago, and made it more obvious that the site was owned and run by google. maybe their sound business decision was to allow the site to grow without making it totally obvious they were in control. now that it's far and away the leading video streaming site, and users have put a lot of time and work into their channels, google is no longer afraid of any backlash by making their presence more obvious. i'll be more careful from now on in checking out site ownership and policies before i get so involved in another site.

I think youtube was the #1 online streaming site in the US when Google bought it. Also, it was all over the newspapers too. I can't help it if you don't read the news on a regular basis. I've gone to youtube several times today and I was not forced to log in to consume any content, so I'm not sure where your problem lies. In my opinion, it is more of an inconvenience to remember 2 log in credentials (I can continue into how this is more secure and protects you as well).

But if you're going to be angry at this, again, why don't you look at multiple other companies out there? This is hardly even a special case of one company owning another and it is common practice to do something like this as well (buy up small company, merge that company into your system).

and i'm not going to inconvenience myself by creating multiple google accounts in an attempt to take advantage of their services anonymously, especially if i'm fed up with the company already.
i had heard of things like keywords in email being used to target ads http://mail.google.com/mail/help/about_pri...#scanning_email and complaints from many countries about private data collected for StreetView http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10278068, so i don't trust the company, and it bothered me even more when they required me to use a google account to login to youtube. if i had known they owned youtube i would have left already. now that i've learned even more about google i'm completely satisfied with my decision.

Can you explain exactly how this infringes my privacy? I don't care about technical details, just let me know how my privacy is being infringed through this link. Maybe you should look at how other companies manage their email systems (Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.). Maybe you should read about the evercookie.

you guys talk about the good they've done with providing convenient services, and that's fine, but to me it doesn't negate their shoot-first-ask-questions-later pattern of conduct. i don't believe they were unaware they had collected data illegally from 30 countries before they figured out the problem. sorry. they can apologize and cooperate with investigators as a sound business decision though.
sources from the wikipedia article i linked include the new york times, LA times, bbc, cnn, and reuters. privacy international is a non-profit global privacy watchdog and trusted source of the bbc.

I actually haven't said anything about the good they've done with providing convenient services (in fact, I wish they would fix certain bugs in their system that they refuse to recognize). I don't know why you are against having a second google account for youtube (it's kind of just like having a google account and a youtube account).

no.

Why? Google refuses a subpoena of their data and you think they're still turning it over to the government? Do realize that most other companies will just turn over your information when it's subpoenaed (even in mass), but Google is willing to spend money (and not a trivial amount) to protect its customer data. Do you just blindly think that Google is harvesting your data for the government?

well looks like google needs a more robust automated system for fairly ranking pages.

I don't understand, they currently have the best (or the most used/proven) system, and you want better? Are you complaining that the best is not good enough? The way you state your response makes it seem like you can come up with a better way for their page rank software (which is constantly tweaked to prevent gaming the system like what happened in the article). I hear that Google is hiring this year, maybe you should apply and tell them you can do it better.

that and they need to stop worrying about moms seeking advice on raising their children.

http://www.wsgr.com/attorneys/NEWBIOS/PDFs...tart_google.pdf (page 3) it may seem trivial to you but it's offensive to me on many levels.

I don't get this link... First of all, the judge notes that, "[t]his disposition is not designated for publication and may not be cited" and then he goes on to, "grant the motion to dismiss..." Not only that but he goes on to say that "[t]he motion to strike will be denied as moot."

Did you read this motion at all and how the lawsuit was trivially moot and there was nothing proving that Google had infringed on anyone or anything?

---

It seems that you have not responded to any of my questions back to you or any counter-arguments. Presumably, I can just go ahead and say that you've made up your mind because you're unwilling to discuss my retorts (from my previous post as well). But here is another one:

Your point is hypocritical because you haven't looked at any other online site or service that you use. Particular this one. I've brought up my privacy concerns of this with Blink and he has far more relaxed standards of your privacy than Google (and Microsoft and Facebook and Yahoo and almost every other forum I've used out there). In fact, Blink pretty much told me that he didn't care about my privacy concerns and that I didn't need to be a part of this community or website. And keep in mind that you're on a website where no one respects anyone's privacy or personal property. Why are you complaining here? Who are you going to convince that your privacy is important? If you're going to stop using Google because of "privacy" concerns, you might as well stop using this forum.