When put like this, the thought that one company controls virtually all information flow on the Internet is more than mildly terrifying.
I am not sure about that. People are generally slow to change habits, especially that Google's control will not grow in a sudden fashion, but rather incrementally.
The side effects of their search algorithms and how they control the flow of information has also been a topic of regular discussion/scrutiny for many years (just one example here [1])
> and if they really tried people would leave
Where would they go?
- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google
- [1] https://mindmatters.ai/2019/07/google-engineer-reveals-searc...
- Google doesn't censor anything
- Google censors things that a lot of people agree are offensive
The 2nd gets into tricky territory, because not everyone agrees on what is/is not offensive. I happen to think that most of the things they remove are probably good to remove. But the implication is still that Google wields (and at times uses) enormous power.
Things get even more grey (and potentially problematic) when you get into ranking algorithms, which have the power to sway opinions on major topics/events.
And as you mentioned, my parent comment is also a response to the very direct (and incorrect) claim:
> It seems that they do [control information], but they don't.
maps - apple, microsoft, openstreetmap
mail - dozens of providers
compute - amazon, microsoft, digital ocean, linode, rackspace
Not sure what else google do, I rarely use them
You're not wrong, but I think rather than bringing up counter-examples, you've produced a list of similar problems.
When someone tries to find a new website someone told them about for the first time... what % of that is filtered through Google? If it's a majority, which I suspect it is, then it's still definitely a problem.
And let's not forget credentials. How many accounts depend on your GMail address? I don't know for you, but for me it encompasses most of the aspect of my life from banking to video games.
Which reminds me of this story: https://archive.is/EVrDv
> In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed. First my Google account was taken over, then deleted. Next my Twitter account was compromised, and used as a platform to broadcast racist and homophobic messages. And worst of all, my AppleID account was broken into, and my hackers used it to remotely erase all of the data on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook.