I personally don't think Google can ever be a champion for user privacy. The more data they can collect about users' online browsing behaviour, the more valuable that data is to its' advertising business.
Google has an insatiable appetite to track and record as much online activity as possible. Their privacy policies remain vaguely-worded and do not tell you what they track and record. Even their statements regarding the NSA revelations are couched in terms of security. Security and privacy are closely related but they are not the same things. I don't doubt that Google has a strong commitment to security, but even if they manage to prevent third-parties snooping on their data that doesn't stop them from collecting the data in the first place.
Consider how ChromeOS could potentially track your every action. If you use ChromeOS as your primary OS over the course of a year, Google knows every website you visited, the total amount of time you spent on those sites, it even knows how often (and when) you print to your desktop printer. For me, the privacy implications are horrendous.
Of course, they are not using this data for nefarious purposes, but no company should be able to collect such phenomenal amounts of data without closer scrutiny.
they do similar things, but have different funding models. since ghostery makes money from selling stats to advertisers you need to be a bit more careful when configuring it if you want complete privacy (disable reporting and enable automatic selection of new updates).
there was a bit of a bitch fight between the developers here a few days ago - i couldn't find it on google, but if you can then it gives some context.
personally, i install both. they seem to run fine together.
Google has an insatiable appetite to track and record as much online activity as possible. Their privacy policies remain vaguely-worded and do not tell you what they track and record. Even their statements regarding the NSA revelations are couched in terms of security. Security and privacy are closely related but they are not the same things. I don't doubt that Google has a strong commitment to security, but even if they manage to prevent third-parties snooping on their data that doesn't stop them from collecting the data in the first place.
Consider how ChromeOS could potentially track your every action. If you use ChromeOS as your primary OS over the course of a year, Google knows every website you visited, the total amount of time you spent on those sites, it even knows how often (and when) you print to your desktop printer. For me, the privacy implications are horrendous.
Of course, they are not using this data for nefarious purposes, but no company should be able to collect such phenomenal amounts of data without closer scrutiny.