It protects user privacy from being violated by Google's competitors.
I think it would be more useful if Google contributed nodes to Tor rather than creating their own (confusingly) centralised, decentralised alternative.
Absolutely not. Tor is chock full of stuff I don’t want to be associated with from spam to worse. Where possible you can block tor traffic, abuse management on tor is pitiful
- If Tor was 'easier' for the end-user or better supported by the centralised pillars of the Internet (such as Google), maybe "spam or worse" traffic would be made a much smaller percentage and improve Tor's reputation
- Does this mean different scales of anonymity/privacy? Tor for the "spam or worse", and this solution of Google's for the casual, not-quite-as-paranoid, private individual?
P.S. You're absolutely right in your paranoia regarding "I don’t want to be associated with". I've had a member of law enforcement accuse me of, basically, being worthy of suspicion (up to and including legal violation of my rights), because I've "got tor on my computer" (yes, that's their level of understanding). They also said that running Virtual Machines and downloading things from Mega will also get you put on a list.
I'd rather Google assist to improve Tor (and it's associated reputation) than "create my own amusement park with blackjack and hookers". In this case, I think one big pool is better than numerous small ones.
P.S. Mega seems to host a number of Android ROMs, which is my primary, and possibly singular, use case.
I think it would be more useful if Google contributed nodes to Tor rather than creating their own (confusingly) centralised, decentralised alternative.