The following Google APIs are used by Chrome and Chromium:
- Chrome Remote Desktop
- Chrome Spelling API
- Chrome Suggest API
- Chrome Sync API
- Chrome Translate Element
- Google Maps Geolocation API
- Safe Browsing API
- Speech API
- Time Zone API
- Google Cloud Messaging for Chrome
- Drive API (Optional, enable this for Files.app on Chrome OS and SyncFileSystem API)
- Google Now For Chrome API (Optional, enabled to show Google Now cards)
- Google+ API
Google has a nice source of behavior data there. They also went out of way with annoying the user, if his build does not use the Google APIs (a notification, that cannot be permanently dismissed).
Why do you refuse an argument just because it was used in another occasion? That appears to me to be a logical fallacy. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
The heart of the argument - that is the demand not to be spied upon - seems to be to be perfectly reasonable and justified due to economic and security aspects. Care to weigh in?
Looking at English dictionaries I found two main meanings of spying:
1) Observing a target with hostile intents.
2) Acquiring and tracking information.
Google has never been hostile towards me. I've never lost money because of Google, or had health damage, or had naked pictures of me released to the web, etc. No "harm" done to me by Google, either literal harm or figurative harm.
So, number 2. If people are complaining of Google tracking information, 99% of things in your computer track your information. Even a simple 'sudo ls' in linux is tracking SOME information to allow you to run other sudo commands without inputting your password again for a while. A computer software that does not store information is usually quite limited.
What harm (and I accept a loose definition of harm here) comes from Google remembering what search you did yesterday or when was the last time you logged on to gmail?
