And why aren't they regulated by laws? This isn't a ban on some small forum. It's basically revoking your passport for the internet.
Are you familiar with existing fair practices, consumer rights, and consumer protections acts?
As far as email, create a domain name and use your own email address.
Free will is great isn’t it? Everything doesn’t require the nanny state to step in and solve all of your problems.
Dependencies create defacto requirements with the alternative of severe disadvantageous if opting out.
Corporations answer to shareholders, creditors, business partners, and management long before they do individual users. Who, in the case of Google aren't even direct customers (advertisers are). Representative governments answer, however imperfectly, to the governed.
Email self-provisioning has significant hurdles for even technically-competent individuals let alone the general public.
Your suggested alternatives ignore the problem and create more.
So now we are going to go down the whole “Minority Report* rabbithole and make laws just in case? You don’t tie your login infrastructure with Google, you use Oauth 2 and plugin any third party you wish.
Representative governments answer, however imperfectly, to the governed.
How well is that working out in the US between gerrymandering, the electoral vote having an opposite outcome than the popular vote, and how it is almost impossible to get rid of an incumbent?
Email self-provisioning has significant hurdles for even technically-competent individuals let alone the general public.
I didn’t say set up your own email server. I said create your own domain. You can create your own domain with your own email address with a few clicks on Godaddy. If you don’t like GoDaddy, there a dozens on other places that will transfer your MX record to them and you keep your own email address.
Regulations serve to create a common and uniform floor of service levels.
The problem with a strictly voluntaryist, free-market, laissez-faire approach is that it tends strongly to a Gresham's law "bad terms drive out good" race-to-the-bottm dynamic, particularly unfortunate when there is but one monopoly provider on the market.
This occurs well before reaching the far end of the slippery slope on which you seem to be perched.
Several of my earlier comments have been badly misapprehended, I'll not belabour them though I'll note the fact.
If people read the conditions of the free google account they realize that the service can be terminated at any time for any reason without warning, and there's absolutely nothing there about any corrective mechanisms.
Contrast this with terms of [especially national] domain name ownership.
Anyway, given the number of people who will give their data to such a service under such conditions, you may well be right that some regulation would be useful, especially around getting your data out in some short time period after account termination. (But only to holders of the valid authentication credentials.) Forced email address portability would be also nice (provider would have to forward incomming emails for a reasonable fee or for free), for some limited time, maybe a year.
It's all well and good for you - someone who's aware of the risks and issues - to say "just don't use Google/Facebook", but laws would protect the average person who just wants the quickest/easiest way to get an email account or to sign in to websites.
Also even if consumers were all highly educated in the pitfalls of Google etc., major websites still force you to use Google technologies whether you like it or not. Google Recaptcha is everywhere; eBay forces you to use it to sign in to your account. Are people now supposed "just don't use eBay" now as well?
Yes, if you don’t like the tradeoffs that eBay gives you - don’t use EBay. You can use Amazon, Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, etc. to sell and buy stuff.
You've gone off the rails here, mate.
You can also get to another website just as easily.
(0) https://www.cnet.com/news/some-senators-in-congress-capitol-... (1) https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9869308/donald-trump-clos...
How about you?
1. The average tenure of Senator or Representative in the US is steadily increasing. (https://www.termlimits.com/new-research-congressional-tenure...) and because of how much money it takes to win an election, it’s really hard to get rid of a member of Congress.
2. Because of how both the Electoral College was designed and the design of the Senate with 2 senators per state regardless of population, if you live in a more populous state, you have less voting power.
3. The more tenured Senators have more power and they have the power to block legislation. The people of the state where the leaders live are the only ones that can oust the Senate leaders.
4. Most rules aren’t done by legislators they are done by committees led by Presidential appointees who are approved by the Senate - again appointments can be blocked by the leaders of the Senate. Many of their policies are approved and struck down by unelected judges.
5. Then there is always gerrymandering.
6. You really don’t believe politicians - many of whom basically did insider trading pre-Covid - are greedy rich people? The President himself is a billionaire.
Could you point out where I said that? Please don't put words into my mouth just to "win" a discussion. That's pretty cheap.
So the alternative between trusting greedy rich people who both don’t have the power of the state, and I can choose to use alternatives, is to trust greedy rich people with the power of the state - most of which I have no power to get rid of because a) they aren’t in my district, b) the alternatives don’t have the money to get elected, and c) get elected by the flyover states because they have two senators just like the more populous states
I have a google account, but I only use it for signins to places I could easily create other means of signing in.
If its for a place I know I want to always have access to and never have to worry about re-creating then I use my personal email.
Google SSO is a convenience only. The world will go on without google and you can certainly use the internet without having a google accout
Say I accidentally trip off something in their opaque machine learning algorithm that determines my extension (or even a YouTube comment!) breaks their terms of service. They would have the right to completely block my account and remove the extension. Effectively, wiping out how I make a living with a single automated bit flip.
It hasn't happened to me, but the people that share horror stories of how it happened to them scares the $#!7 out of me.
As the Internet gets more privatized and less "open", I just wish there was something that required a fair "trial" of my account being suspended. The balance of power online is slowly shifting and I feel there needs to be something protecting the rights of individuals (the public) online.
Congratulations on being a better Internet user that the rest of the world! You are clearly very proud.
For the vast majority of people, their SaaS email (in most cases probably a Gmail account) is in fact their primary identity on the Internet, and that's not going to change because they wouldn't even know where to start looking for other options.
Before you say "that's their own fault for not knowing better", I would ask you: did you get your own medical degree so that you can handle all your own medical problems? What about a car? Did you build your own car? Do you have a law degree? Do you grow all your own food? Are you a licensed electrician? How about a food safety engineer? An architect? No? So you rely on established and proven products, systems and service providers for these things? Of course you do, because that's how society works.
Technology folks often forget that we happen to have specialized in a field that is now dominant and pervasive in everyday life, so we "get it" more than most, but that's not the case, sometimes not even an option, for most people..
Businesses should absolutely have the right to not let you use their services for any arbitrary reason! It's a free market! Sucks to be you!
</ sarcasm> ［Offer valid until the same thing happens to me, then I can scream and cry about it］
Did you build your own car? Are you asking us to compare building a car to using a gmail account. The comparison is did you build your own google mail provider. Very few have.
But most of us went to different dealships test drove different cars, looked up tech details and reviews. Reviewed recalls and decided for ourselves.
What kind of special degree do you feel you need to pick a different email provider?
And most people don't uses a sass. I would expect a slightly more tech enabled person to be using a sass (not too many grandmothers or average internet need a sass). Can those people figure out how to signed up without google if they want to? I would hope so. If your sass doesn't offer any other way to sign up it won't be around for too long anyhow.
If you are going to put everything under your google services for your saas pay a few dollars and get a business account if it's important to your business.
In which case they are in luck. There are a multitude of email-providers worldwide, and email is 100% transferable.
Many people for instance use Office 365. A similar SaaS, not Google, allowing you to digitally separate who you are from what you do.
> did you get your own medical degree so that you can handle all your own medical problems?
No. Absolutely not.
Nor did I once sign up for a medical check, pledging that I would for the rest of my life use this one medical facility only.
Do you know anyone who has ever done so? Ofcourse not, because that makes no sense.
And it should similarly make no sense to make such a move in the digital world, maybe there even less.
If you separate email (identity) from what you do (like using Google services), the worst Google can do is ban your ability to do business with Google, not your ability to do business at all.
As a business, why would anyone be stupid enough to take the risk and let Google have that ability?
Edit: As for being the most HN comment ever, how goes conflating email for Gmail and seemingly being unaware of there being other email-providers than Google? I mean, really?
Really? You think the average person can navigate changing all the services they signed up for with a Google account they've lost access to, and update it to a new account at a new provider?
Having helped a few non-technical but still very smart people do this over the years, I can tell you that for most people this would be way more daunting and painful than you believe.
> If you separate email (identity) from what you do (like using Google services), the worst Google can do is ban your ability to do business with Google, not your ability to do business at all.
You say this so casually, and that's my whole point. Most people wouldn't understand this distinction or even know where to start to actually do this.
You rely on your technical knowledge without even realizing it, to even understand the need or option to do this. Again, most people do not have this level of technical acumen. These are unknown unknowns for them.
I chose cars, health care, food and housing in my examples because they are day-to-day things for everyone that we all take for granted and don't deeply understand, and rely on experts to handle for us, but can't really live without. That's the Internet for most people.
You missed the point by splitting hairs and nit-picking the comparisons.
> As for being the most HN comment ever, how goes conflating email for Gmail and seemingly being unaware of there being other email-providers than Google? I mean, really?
This is now the second-most HN comment ever. ;-)