If your employer forced you to either use Google or Microsoft or some other tech company (Apple, Samsung, etc.) what would be a better choice?
Which company is more compliant in terms of privacy or generally better and why?
I was thinking about Google since there were new regulations enforced by government and at least I don’t have to pay for Google Docs, unlike Microsoft where I pay and I’m still spied on.
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They’re all kinda shit for privacy so I prefer to choose based on who locks me into their ‘ecosystem’ the least, which I’d argue is Google
Google.
I worked there, I didn’t like them before, I like them only slightly less after. That’s the closest to a ringing endorsement I can give to a company that size.
They do actually mean well, even if they are a weird combination of brilliant and incredibly stupid.
Still, they have a concept of shame and guilt which is something very few other companies have, specifically they have pride, stupid, childish pride but still.
They’re an odd combination of too stupid to be evil easily, they have to work harder at it.
But no, I still wouldn’t trust them, eventually someone who understands will figure it out and you can never delete your data from them.
They don’t follow the EU law of deleting data after request?
I’m sure they have a process to do that, it was drilled into us that there were regulations and procedures they had to respect for each country.
While I marginally trust them now, I wouldn’t trust them to the indefinite future, desperate MBAs are capable of anything.
Also a Google employee. Can confirm, most engineers mean well and are very good at what they do, but that doesn’t mean our bloated codebases are secure and outside of launch security and privacy reviews (which are easily waived) almost no one even considers privacy or security implications in design or engineering.
What worries me is when they start missing earnings reports and some vp decides he has a clever idea to monetize previously unmonetized data.
That sounds terrifying, but it’s also just a possibility and they would have a debate about it.
I would say Apple > Google > Microsoft (I think) but if it is possible I would recommend using it for the absolute least amount of stuff possible. I have to use Microsoft stuff for school and I simply do everything in LibreOffice then check the final copy in MS Office to ensure that nothing is broken. (Also a quick side note: F Microsoft for creating a giant obfuscated document standard and bribing the ISO to force everyone to use it.)
Apple.
If I had to pick one, I’d pick whichever is going to conform better with the team. Then only use that ecosystem and hardware, for work.
Taking that option off the table, and I was considering which one is better… Google is the easy winner. Google has some pretty decent toggles, with (most) settings having documentation. They also support E2EE for business clients. Google also has a pretty good history of data security. In comparison it feels like MicroSoft has a big vulnerability announced at least once a year.
What a business license is paying for, typically, is privacy / protection for its proprietary information; Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc are all going to be good enough. Boils down to terms and conditions of the business agreement. Your information as an employee is “protected” but assume your employer is going to know and see all. Never use your work things for personal things.
Apple has the best consumer level privacy options imo; again, it’s not free.
The company can pick whatever they want and as long as they keep paying me I’ll use whatever janky ass software all day long.
Personal accounts completely separate though
Not going to lie; Google is largely not as bad. I don’t see Google being as intrusive as they are just simply BIG. This does have some concerns to be worried about; and it can be seriously bad for your privacy. I don’t notice any significant privacy issues; particularly since the worst of Google’s offenses can be either blocked or mitigated somehow. They rely on your inaction, and most of the time do not try to override your actions to preserve privacy. Yes there are some exceptions; like with Youtube attempting to force users to watch ads; but these are few and far between when you look into all of Google services in general.
Most of the time if you’re using a paid “Workspace” account; there’s even a complete lack of ads…as all your usage is paid for anyways.
Google is intrusive. The story where Google literally send police on a dad that had stored photos of his son on Google Drive that he meant to show to a doctor or countless stories with scanning emails. For the first one a mitigation could be to encrypt files before hand, but it’s not at all convenient for regular people that want to have their photos automatically synced and backed up. For the second one, you could also encrypt emails beforehand using PGP, but yeah, pretty much no one does that. And none of this potential mitigations make Google any less intrusive. And I think I could even argue they allow themselves to be like that because they are this big.
That being said, I’m not arguing that Google Workspace, that integrate tools, storage and emails for way cheaper that other alternatives, is not great value for companies. But it’s still Google, so no matter how you look at it, it’s still bad choice for privacy. But the other choice being Microsoft, there’s hardly a better way.
If your employer forces you to use a platform… only use it for work.
Use a platform of your choice for your personal data.
FWIW if you want to use a mainstream platform use one based in a GDPR country.