Also, the EU has failed to produce any viable alternative to Google mostly because of our shitty laws. Let's not pretend the hegemony of Google is some kind of imperialism that was forced on us.
Being able to transition off google has become a privilege that’s especially difficult on low income folks.
Had one before android existed.
> free decent email provider,
Still use the same I used before gmail was a thing.
> cheap usable computer etc
I cannot comprehend from what kind of twisted alternate reality this claim hails.
Or did you simply forget to mark your sarcasm with /s ?
> failed to produce any viable alternative to Google
These two statements seem to be in conflict
This is true, bit misses the point.
The point is that through whatever means, but including cheating, Google has become incredibly, obscenely powerful.
And one of the many reasons that is undesirable is the aforementioned cheating.
Unless you’re a hermit who disconnects entirely from the web, you can’t drop them.
You may cancel all your accounts, but you’ll still visit sites that use google analytics, interact with hosts that use Google’s registrars for their domain names, be profiled by google and included in targeted advertising by web sites that you don’t even know.
You’ll also be impacted by the incentives google puts on content creators through their de facto standards of chrome, web video, drm, etc.
I’d say it’s easier to drop the EU than Google. You can move to Britain or elsewhere and escape EU laws. You can’t go anywhere on the internet to escape Google’s laws.
In which country of the world can you "choose to drop your government any second"?
Though feel free to drop Google, if you can
Good luck with that, Google is everywhere (search, maps, mobile phones, and many more). You have to make a lot of effort to avoid it.
It is far easier to drop EU government because elections happen every few years. In case of Google you don't have elections (or maybe you have, but it is shareholder voting, so more like plutocracy).
I can move out of EU or vote to change it. I don't have that power with Google.
Normally people thing it is just search, but search is just the tip of the iceberg.
In case of EU, you just need to wait max 5 years for next elections and you can have your input by voting (in case of Google you can send your input to /dev/null of their automated "customer service").
Would you be able to avoid (just for one week):
- google analytics,
- GCP (this one is hard),
- youtube,
- google dns servers,
- android without any google services (or just iOS, this one might be easier if you already have iPhone, but for majority of people it is not easy),
- adwords/adsense
- fonts
- translate
- pay (again, easier of you are iPhone user)
- photos
- maps
- charts (you can have link to those on web pages)
- chrome
- gmail (if you don't have account there then it is easy, if you have - it is almost impossible to change your email address everywhere)
And also imagine a person that is an "average Joe", has cheap Android phone, uses Chrome without any ad blocking and has email account in gmail.
Would it be easy for him? Or would it be easier to go voting? Or find a job in neighboring country that doesn't belong to EU (e.g. Switzerland or Norway, not sure if UK counts right now) ?
Nobody is really restricted in that way.
It’s obviously much easier to buy an iPhone and install an ad-blocker than it is to get a new job in Switzerland or Norway if you don’t already live there.
Have you actually looked at at what it takes to emigrate to Switzerland?
As for your list, of course you can’t stop other people from using Google. We’re talking about not using Google yourself.
I didn't say that the "Joe" has to use cheap Android phone and gmail account. I just said that he has one already because one is cheap and the other is free. So imagine that he used both for several years.
And now he can change that, but is it easy? Buying iPhone is easy (not cheap, but moving out is also not cheap), but changing your email address in zillion places is next to impossible.