(and possibly Snap)

I hope they exclude Snap from the default installation. Don’t want an OS with built-in support for Canonical’s closed source app store service when Flatpak is decentralized and FOSS on the server side.

Avast should not be recommended.

In late 2019, Avast browser extensions were found to collect user data, including browsing behavior and history, and send it to a remote server. The discovery led to the extensions of the Avast and AVG brands being temporarily removed from the Google Chrome, Firefox and Opera extension stores, however, they returned a short time later as there was no concrete evidence that demonstrated a breach of private data of the users.

In January 2020, a joint investigation by Motherboard and PCMag found that the Avast Antivirus and AVG AntiVirus Free version were collecting user data, which was being resold to personalize advertising through a subsidiary, Jumpshot. The leaked documents showed that Jumpshot offered to provide its customers with “Every search. Every click. On every site.” from more than 100 million compromised devices. In response, Avast announced on January 30, 2020, that it would immediately shut down Jumpshot and cease all operations due to the backlash of its users’ data privacy.

On the basis of the information revealed, on 11 February 2020 the Czech Office for Personal Data Protection announced that it had initiated a preliminary investigation.

In February 2024, the Federal Trade Commission fined Avast $16.5 million for collecting user data and reselling that data. The collection was done under their program to ensure that such collection of user data was not happening.

Only Google is claiming that the damages are less than $1 million. You’re taking Google’s self-interested claim as fact while overlooking Google’s financial motivation to pay less than what they owe, which a jury could find to be in the hundreds of millions. For obvious reasons, court judgments aren’t decided by the defendants.

Based on the statements Google previously made, Google most likely sent a check for a fraction of the damages that a jury could find them liable for.

It’s unclear just how big the check was. The court filing redacted key figures to protect Google’s trade secrets. But Google claimed that testimony from US experts “shrank” the damages estimate “considerably” from initial estimates between $100 million and $300 million, suggesting that the current damages estimate is “substantially less” than what the US has paid so far in expert fees to reach those estimates.

According to Reuters, Google has not disclosed “the size of its payment” but has said that “after months of discovery, the Justice Department could only point to estimated damages of less than $1 million.”

A fine of less than $1 million is absolutely not what anyone except Google is asking for.