/e/ in PCMag.com as the "anti-Pixel"

saschasegan · October 21, 2019, 9:20pm

Hello folks. Since the Pixel 4 is coming out today, I decided to spend the weekend installing and using /e/ (something I’ve wanted to do for several months) and writing about it as an alternative. In terms of audience and technical level, I tend to write for a very mixed range, generally people who are computer-literate but not developers. I’d be interested to know what you think!

dotcoma · October 22, 2019, 1:20am

Hi Sascha, I don’t think you’re being fair when you say…

Use Citymapper, Yelp, Uber Lyft etc on an iPhone, and you have the
same problem you have with /e/ if you use apps loaded with trackers.

In fact, you’re probably better off with /e/ because it gives you access
to F-droid, where you can find non-commercial apps with no trackers.

archie · October 22, 2019, 9:11am

Reference: Hands On With /e/, a Version of Android That Ditches Google - Sascha Segan, 21.10.2019

North America is not the world. The global market shares are approximately Android 74%, iOS (iPhone) 23%, Other 3%. Similar are the market shares are in Europe: Android 71% ~ 28% ~ Other 1%
Reference: Statcounter GlobalStats.

Nevertheless, North Americans love the iPhone and Apple’s restrictive ecosystem. I’m not a friend of it.

/e/ OS and Graphene OS are on the right track. Especially when a user is aware of Goolge’s data collection practices and privacy and data security are important.

In “Google Data Collection” Douglas C. Schmidt, Professor of Computer Science at Vanderbilt University, catalogs how much data Google is collecting about consumers and their most personal habits across all of its products and how that data is being tied together.

The key findings include:

A dormant, stationary Android phone (with the Chrome browser active in the background) communicated location information to Google 340 times during a 24-hour period, or at an average of 14 data communications per hour. In fact, location information constituted 35 percent of all the data samples sent to Google.

For comparison’s sake, a similar experiment found that on an iOS device with Safari but not Chrome, Google could not collect any appreciable data unless a user was interacting with the device. Moreover, an idle Android phone running the Chrome browser sends back to Google nearly fifty times as many data requests per hour as an idle iOS phone running Safari.

An idle Android device communicates with Google nearly 10 times more frequently as an Apple device communicates with Apple servers. These results highlighted the fact that Android and Chrome platforms are critical vehicles for Google’s data collection. Again, these experiments were done on stationary phones with no user interactions. If you actually use your phone the information collection increases with Google.

More …

» Download Report PDF 08.2018 (55 pages)

There is much to do in the /e/ ecosystem …

saschasegan · October 22, 2019, 12:23pm

Absolutely correct about third-party apps. That’s why the next sentence in that paragraph is “As soon as you load Uber or Lyft, though, you’ve been re-Googled to some extent.”

Honestly that’s my biggest struggle in describing this solution for people who do not have an ideological interest in open source. What I’ve gotten from my readers is typically “I would like to have less exposure to certain tech giants, but not at the loss of X service that I and all my friends use.” Tricky circle to square, but I think the answer is in heading for -less- exposure rather than -no- exposure.

archie · October 22, 2019, 2:26pm

Exactly! Less is more - and as much as possible.

By the way: Your article differs pleasantly from numerous others because it was written in a practice-oriented way.