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> I think Google is great.

I use Google's products daily and agree they are often better than the competition. But do you not at least see the potential for a problem when gigantic semi-monopolistic tech companies control major parts of the societal methods for discourse and discovery, while collecting personal data from almost everyone? Are people who worry about this so unreasonable that they are deserving of flippant insults and name-calling?

> What's next? No more StackOverflow? No more using that popular package manager and, instead, installing all that stuff manually?

You give no convincing reason why that would be a probable next step, if you even believe it yourself. You buried your own point beneath so many layers of sarcasm that it is neither humorous nor insightful.

> But do you not at least see the potential for a problem when gigantic semi-monopolistic tech companies control major parts of the societal methods for discourse and discovery, while collecting personal data from almost everyone...

Sure, that's called Facebook, and yet it's still around.

Sure it's still around, and anyone considering dropping Google probably dropped Facebook a long time ago.

This is a textbook false dichotomy. You're basically saying there are two choices 1) use whatever is convenient with absolutely no regard for privacy or 2) don't use computers at all and put on a tinfoil hat.

> Where do you draw the line?

Clearly they've drawn it to exclude Google, what's the problem with that?

There's obviously no inherent problem, but their reasoning is all theoretical and there's no reason not to expand it further based on their own logic. If you don't trust Google, why would you trust any of the other major players online like AWS, Azure, Cloudflare etc? Without those the internet basically doesn't work and you'd be better off not even bothering, thus meaning option 2 is the end result of the privacy minded.

> and there's no reason not to expand it further based on their own logic

And this is a textbook slippery slope argument. Also the clear difference between Google and the examples you've provided is the revenue model. The primary way Google makes money is selling user data to advertisers. next to social media sites, they're the most obvious targets for privacy-minded people.

I'm so glad that you are so happy with your choice of products and services.

For the rest of us, it's very liberating to have some agency over who owns our data. Any agency at all.

It makes me so happy to see people standing up for what they believe in. I don't agree with the author's views on Google but I do agree with his personal stance of willing to be inconvenienced because of his views on Google.

I observe that most people are willing to hold an opinion until they are inconvenienced. Society would be better if citizens backed their values with their actions. Convenience is not a value.

People switching away from Gmail aren't switching away from IMAP.

People giving up Google Search aren't leaving HTTPS.

You draw the line at open protocols.

Maybe StackOverflow should be decentralized and community governed. Maybe we should be demanding more open hardware. Maybe we do need to re-evaluate who's maintaining our packages and make sure their interests are aligned with community interests. We can vote with our attention and money and what software we choose to run.

Personally, do what you're comfortable with, but you shouldn't mock others for trying to make privacy possible. You never know, some day you might need it.

If you love Google then you're not the target audience for this. It's for people who ~~acknowledge the obvious fact that~~ believe Google is evil and want to minimize their interaction with the company.

I wonder, when someone doesn't like something, do you say "Vote with your wallet, don't use it?"

Or do you say "use it anyway, how tiresome, you're obligated to use XYZ Company because I like them"?

I truly cannot see a point to your post at all.

The internet world has been overrun by marketing people. But know that all marketing is a subset of the work by Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, and creator of Propaganda/ Public Relations. I'm not a fan of it.

Personally, I feel there's a lot to dislike about in the modern world. The 'advances' in technology also come with an increased speed at which things are done. I presume many, if not most would use the word "efficiency" to describe it.

But in the days before wireless phones, you would arrange places and times, and it would or wouldn't happen to the schedule, and you had to accept it.

So, although you label the people looking elsewhere a snowflake (made me laugh btw), I find the opposite is actually happening. Because people aren't being forced to learn the lesson of acceptance and that things are out of their control, we've created a binary world figuratively and literally where woke arguments clash with others at the speed of light. Everyday I discover there another group of people hating another... And use tech to do it: publically.

So, instead I see this push to decouple from goog, as desire for more autonomy and control in one's life. Everything these days is right at our fingertips, and goog was the first to bring this to us. Ironically, I see the snowflakes as those in this hyper connected world, where outrage exists under every tech interaction, because they've never had to learn acceptance. I find myself aligning myself with farmers, because they have to deal with acceptance a lot: from fixing machines in the middle of a field to burying animals. Everything is hard for a farmer, and tech solutions ultimately break at an inconvenient time.

If it weren't for people depending on me to provide some modicum of alternate communication and interaction using tech, I'd have left all it long ago. (But I accept this)

My friends have heard me talking of the desire for two tin cans and a piece of string. I think it's the way to go.

So, the short answer for me is no vpn, no goog, no ddg, no fastmail is better. Self host, only. I don't care for twits or public selfies.

Search results tailored to your liking?

My what an excellent bubble you’ve built for yourself. No wonder you like Google. I bet your panties got in quite a wad reading about people who don’t like the things you do.

Their search results suck. Are getting worse every year.

IMHO.

I use Google products heavily, especially Android, Maps and Gmail, but I have switched to using DuckDuckGo as my primary search provider. Have been using it as my default for over a year now and it feels like Google used to, before all the annoying personalised results and tinkering started ruining their search.

I agree, although sometimes it works. The same is true of other search engines, although they are sometimes better, sometimes worse, than Google. (But often I don't need web search that much anyways. I have man pages, Wikipedia, books, etc.)