Correct! For me, the closed source “walled garden” approach is the most frustrating.

But, dude, dude, dude… remember the 30-pin transition debacle? I’m having bad flashbacks lol

Ok, so you listed basically all of their business strategies, which is exactly my point. It’s not a business built SOLELY on proprietary ports and cables, yet that aspect is what gets the most attention and criticism.

I feel like we are all of the same opinions on this but somehow missing each other lol. Very obviously, Google has had a massive influence on technology and the internet as a whole. As you stated, there have been plenty of abuses of that power in the past, most commonly noted with privacy concerns and data collection. Hence, how I arrived at my original position with regards to Brave as a browser.

Per their wiki article, “Chromium is a free and open-source web browser project, mainly developed and maintained by Google.” Source, i suppose

I know they’re different. I know it’s FOSS. I also know I do not believe Google is being altruistic and I do not have the expertise nor time to audit the code myself. I am not the subject matter expert here, but I know I’ve seen what Google can do and that certainly biases my opinion. I don’t believe any corporation that large is genuinely concerned about anything but capital acquisition.