“Don’t be evil, Google”
Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Vivaldi Technologies, said in a blog post it is time for Google to return to not being evil.
“A monopoly both in search and advertising, Google, unfortunately, shows that they are not able to resist the misuse of power,” said von Tetzchner.
He said the company is hurting the Opera browser and has moved away from working with the Mozilla foundation.
“They also introduced new services such as Google Docs. These services were great, gained quick popularity, but also exposed the darker side of Google.”
“Not only were these services made to be incompatible with Opera, but also encouraged users to switch their browsers.”
Von Tetzchner brought this up with Google founder Sergey Brin, but it was in vain.
“For millions of Opera users to access these services, we had to hide our browser’s identity.”
The situation is no different with the new Vivaldi browser, based on Chromium – the open-source project led by Google.
“We still have to hide our identity when visiting services such as Google Docs.”
He said matters then hit a new low after their Google AdWords campaigns were suspended without warning.
This happened after he criticised Google and Facebook for collecting and aggregating users’ personal information.
“I am saddened by this makeover of a geeky, positive company into the bully they are in 2017.”
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