Google’s story over the last two decades has been a tale as old as time: enshittification for growth. The once-beloved startup—with its unofficial “Don’t Be Evil” motto—has instead become a major Internet monopolist, as a federal judge ruled on Monday, dominating the market for online search. Google is also well-known for its data-harvesting practices, for constantly killing off products, and for facilitating the rise of brain-cell-destroying YouTubers who make me Fear for Today’s Youth. (Maybe that last one is just me?)
Google’s rapid rise from “scrappy search engine with doodles” to “dystopic mega-corporation” has been remarkable in many ways, especially when you consider just how much goodwill the company squandered so quickly. Along the way, though, Google has achieved one unexpected result: In a divided America, it offers just about everyone something to hate.
Here are just a few of the players hating Google today.
For the 113th time: YES
Google stopped being cool ages ago and Chrome marked the moment they turned evil. They no longer had an incentive to just throw money at problems, they wanted to completely drive the web ecosystem and they did. They had a browser.
everyone with common sense and the ability to pay attention has hated google for over a decade.
Sure thing, cool guy.
I’m not cool.
Cool guys sit there and get pissy about criticism of their dearest waifu company. Like you, Mr.Cool.
A lot of people still don’t know.
Some people don’t even know what Reddit is.
Now, Reddit is charging Google for priority access to its posts (article - only Google and Brave will show those results in the near future).
Perhaps Google will start charging money to use it also.
Now, Reddit is charging Google for priority access to its posts
If the idiots at Google hadn’t shut down DejaNews they would have already owned a discussion forum more popular than reddit.
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The lesson is never trust any corporation ever. A lot of people fell for their schtick and feel stuck now. The cohort of users on this fediverse platform are gonna trend towards more anti-corporate and more tech savvy. The best thing we can be right now is gracious towards those realizing a titch too late how fucked everything is
Sadly a lot of content is only on YouTube, and you only live once.
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People do upload to other sites, especially when YouTube won’t host it, but sadly sometimes it’s banned for a good reason.
I hope either Grayjay will take off or something like it will, because lowering the barrier to getting users to switch platforms is the right way forward. If enough creators upload to multiple sites, users can choose the site they like the most.
I wish more people used Peertube, but the monetization issue needs to be “solved” somehow.
For situations like encouraging authors of works where I lack specific solution to the issue then I fall back on old reliable: [universal basic income](Universal basic income). When people work as a matter of getting money for a better life, rather than survival, then people are able to take bigger risks when it comes to creative works.
Cody Doctorow talks about this. I won’t quote the link because the whole text is basically that, why people stick to hostile platforms.
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Sorry - I posted this link as further info for anyone who’s reading this. I didn’t want to convey that you need it; if someone else does want/need it, great.
Work in progress
On August 5, 2024, Trump asked his supporters to stop using Google.
Did not know that. Well. Stopped clock, blind squirrel, etc.
You got that right bro. Greed breeds abuse of the customer. Mega-companies, become the worst problem the world has because of that same greed. To put it bluntly “Greed is not good” to mis-quote a 'Wall Street" movie character player by Charlie Sheen.
<cough> Michael <cough> Douglas <cough>
Corporations: Hmm, we seem to have saturated our market. How do we make line keep go up?
- Diversify our products to cater to new or niche markets.
- Accept the status quo and focus on making our existing customers happy while integrating feedback to improve and entice people to ditch our competitors?
- Make everything worse because what are they gonna do, use Bing? LOL
- Congratulate ourselves on winning capitalism, then selling our stocks to the employees so we can go enjoy our wealth and return forever.
- HAHAHAHA yeah right. Time to squeeze this shit for every red cent then cash out before the stock price crashes and move in to the next victim.
We demand infinite growth. Why? Because shareholders want to buy shares and sell them later for more.
Do anything it takes to make that transaction happen, cut people’s jobs en masse, whatever.
Forever.
WE don’t demand it.
By context “we” refers to google.
Stock holders demand infinite growth. If the management doesn’t make money, they put in place new management. A company is only worth the value of the next stock buyback or dividend. It’s baked into the structure of corporations, especially publicly-owned corporations.
Stock holders can sue the company if there’s a loss, too. That shouldn’t be a thing, but here we are.
Whoever passed that bullshit is responsible for so much of what’s wrong with our economy.
*Capitalism demands infinite growth. Because the goal of Capitalism first and foremost isn’t providing a good product or upholding moral values, but to make money.
Infinite growth in a closed and limited system.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with this.
edit
/s for the oblivious
Despite the convenience of some of its tools, the hardcore tech set increasingly prefers tech companies like Signal or even Apple, which is currently running expensive TV ads about how other browsers (read: Google’s Chrome) spy on you.
One important thing to be mentioned is that, while Apple is correct when highlighting that Chrome is a privacy nightmare, Apple and Google are cut from the same cloth and they’re both user-hostile when it comes to privacy, monopoly enforcement, censorship, etc. Both deserve the hate that they get. (Alongside Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft.)
Whats a good google maps alternative?
Ive had some success with OSM+ but only if I supply the end point myself. Otherwise it had a really hard time getting a place like Home Depot or a local university, etc…etc…
I use Organic Maps. But it does not YET have traffic data. So if it’s an area with traffic jams, I use Google maps. But most of the time organic maps is great
Try the Organic Maps app
In terms of map data, as far as I know there’s pretty much only OSM, Google Maps and Apple Maps (which is getting a beta browser version)*.
OSM map data is usually excellent, search can be very hit or miss though. You might want to try some of the apps that use OSM data like Organic Maps to see if you get better search results using that. Personally I use both Apple Maps and Organic Maps.
* I also know of Mapquest but it’s lacking a lot of POIs and even ways from what I can see, at least in the two cities I’ve checked.
Maybe if you’re in a big city, or maybe Europe. I recently moved back to the US from Asia and found OSM data to be really bad in the small city that I come from.
Be the change you want to see :)
Nationalize google and turn it into a coop that is democratically controlled by worker and users. Lets us vote on their management and corporate priorities and policies.
To hell with the shareholders! They ruin everything!
I wish there were more coops. Shareholders are almost the entire reason for the mess we find ourselves in.
At least their crawlers should be nationalised/coop/something.
They took down the Don’t Be Evil sign.
Reminds me of a cannibal in the Deltora series who has the sign “LIVE NO EVIL” on the wall, when it’s actually “LIVE ON EVIL” but mirrored.
Don’tBe Evilfaster just to x through the problematic bits.
That is more Elon’s thing 🤣
I don’t use Google anymore except for Google maps in my car. :) I guess they can spy on where I’m driving. But no search history.
Magic earth is a great alternative.
I came across “Organic Maps” and it’s really impressive. I now use them 50/50. The only real difference for me is that Google maps shows the traffic jams. So if it’s a long journey I use Google, but if I’m not in a rush and just need directions I use Organic.
openstreetmaps
I’m all about that duck duck go yo
I’ve started to try and move away from Google as much as possible, which I knew would be difficult, but it’s proving to be harder than I thought.
I can’t do anything about my work stuff, because our company uses Google for email and cloud storage. I set up an account on Proton Mail for my personal email and file storage. I currently have an android phone, but I don’t like iPhones so I don’t really know what I want to do there. I switched back to Firefox after 15 years of using Chrome. I actually started using Bing search more. I’m looking into alternatives for the Chromecast that Google doesn’t seem interested in supporting anyway, which might just end up being a small PC hooked up to the TV.
I’m just so tired of Google services either being shut down or slowly getting worse and worse until they’re nearly unusable.
It’s not as hard as you’d think. https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle - This has everything you need. Definitely use Firefox. Check out Nextcloud for personal cloud/documents replacement etc. Definitely try a small PC hooked to your TV and look in to plex. Don’t use Google/Bing, stick with DuckDuckGo and if you need to, use !g or !b in your searched on ddg to get bing and google results. It’s fun exploring all the alternatives in the list.
On the android front, if you don’t mind using a pixel phone then Graphene OS would be worth checking out. It’s a foss non rooted alternative to base android with a focus on privacy and security. The no root requirement means a good amount of apps like banking work properly on it. It vastly expands the app permission system and removes the special privileges to Google system apps, allowing you to remove it or limit them. It also supports sandboxing of the play store and multiple profiles so you can effectively quarantine Google requiring apps.
+1 for GrapheneOS on a Pixel. I use GrapheneOS on a Pixel 7 Pro. It’s just awesome. I will never go back. Camera is awesome too.
@StormWalker @wispy_jsp
I have been using GrapheneOs for many years, now I am using Google Pixel 8, I had to install Google Camera App to make the best use of the cameraYeah I’m with you there, the pixel camera app is a must for me too. What I love about GrapheneOS is how easy it is to block permissions. So with google pixel camera app, no network and no location permissions means that it cannot report back to google unless I allow it to. It’s a safe way to use the odd google app in a limited way when you need to. The other google app I use is the g-keyboard, because it is so much better in some ways. But again it is very restricted and I turned off the features I don’t want, like voice typing.
“Brave search” seems to work good for me with Firefox. Protonmail is awesome yeah 👍🏻 There are alternatives to everything, just finding the good ones!
