I wish to introduce young college goers to the concept of open source, and the best tool would be their Android phones and the manner in which they install apps. Although I install my apps from f-droid and from Aurora, yet it’s important to raise the issue regarding privacy and security when it comes to Google and Microsoft.
I’m not a technical person myself. So I need to understand in a technical language how exactly Google and Microsoft robs us of our privacy.
Google Play Store ties your app activity to a tracked Google account and feeds it into Google’s ad profile, while the proprietary Play Services runs in the background collecting telemetry you can’t audit or disable—unlike open-source alternatives like F-Droid, where everything is verifiable.
Google is quite good at security though. They make the most secure android hardware afaik. Chromebooks are some of the most secure computers.
Security means you’re safe from your threat model, and if your threat model includes invasion of privacy, Google isn’t providing security to you; they are the threat.
But I get what you mean! They have a good security team keeping you safe from threats other than Google and USG. 
I just think we need to be careful with the broad terminology.
So that means those who do not trust Google are primarily concerned about their privacy ?
I can’t speak for everyone but yes, that’s mostly it. If there would be other reasons to not trust Google’s security, it would revolve around other threat actors that Google keeps tabs on: APT groups and threat actors | Google Cloud
Or it could be availability issues but it doesn’t look horrible compared to e.g. GitHub Google Cloud Service Health I’ve never heard of an incident where Google messed up losing user data from their servers.
Play Store could carry malicious applications or just ones that spy on you as part of their business model, that’s an industry-wide problem and Google seems to be scanning apps for malware.
I can’t really think of else but I’m interested to hear if I have a blind spot here.
It seems many FOSS apps that are on the play store include Google’s services in their apps while they offer a version on GitHub and FDroid without Google services. Bitwarden for example.
Thanks for sharing those two links. But being a non technical person myself, I wouldn’t be able to make out a single thing about what you wish to convey by sharing those links.
Do you now realise the massive challenge I have in front of me, trying to promote open source in a market where Google has got trained representatives ??
Look into the Real-Time Bidding Ad Network. It’s scary AF. Lol.
I’ve been told explicitly that Google’s business model is collecting data from the individual users and selling them off to companies.
Not quite. Google doesn’t sell the data directly, they use the data to sell ad space to partners.
Relevant link to understanding Google’s data collection business model: