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Comment by smhenderson | Hacker News Reader

That whole "you're not paying"'thing is really a straw man at this point too. When Google was young and eager to be a good netizen I'd have agreed with that and said it was all part of helping to make the web better.

But they've been entrenched for years now, completely dominate so many aspects of the web and get plenty of value out of even their free users.

Given their size and stranglehold on just about everything, pulling an "oops, sorry, I guess you get what you pay for" is just ludicrous at this point.

And sorry if it seems like I'm arguing directly with you, that's not my intention. But I see this a lot and have gone from saying it myself to vehemently disagreeing with it over the last decade or so.

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Of course Google gets value out of free users--that's a huge piece of their business model. And of course if Google had actually kept to their original "don't be evil" model, they wouldn't routinely screw over users the way they do.

However, as you note, they have been entrenched for years now, and it has been obvious for that same amount of time that they have long since dropped "don't be evil". So while it certainly sucks that they do the things they do, acting surprised when it happens is not a reasonable position at this point. Anyone who expects Google to honor any kind of commitment is simply asking for trouble. I don't trust them for anything.

And if widespread realization of that fact gets people to stop using Google services, so much the better: maybe that would actually get their attention.

The average non-tech savvy person doesn't really have an option than to get screwed over then. Assuming you have an Android phone, it's practically required to have a Google account; many apps just flat out do not work without Google Play Services or without signing in with your Gmail account.

Yes, I know about microG, Graphene, F-Droid and the like, but the average person is not going to flash their phone. They will inevitably hit a wall that says "you need to login with Google," create a Google account, and won't ask questions.

Just as an example, my mother-in-law couldn't find her contacts when she bought a new phone. Why? Because she was unknowingly saving her contacts to a Google account she forgot she made.

> Assuming you have an Android phone, it's practically required to have a Google account

To the extent this is true, it's not just Google, it's also the phone manufacturers and service providers (like Verizon).

You can use apps from F-Droid without flashing your phone. The only apps I have from the playstore are apps for a few financial institutions, otherwise it's all F-Droid.

And you don't need to be hackerman to do this, I told my retired parents "you should check out F-Droid" and they did. Now they recommend F-Droid apps to me.

But you and I (and perhaps your retired parents) are the exception. Most people want to have their bank app on their phone. They can't get that on F-Droid, so they go to Google Play Store.

Last I checked a bank is a financial institution, which the GP said they still get from Google Play. But that doesn't mean you have to get all your apps from Google Play, which was the GP's point.

Good point. I have never considered this argument before, but I agree. In a healthy case, the sphere of responsibility (of a company, individual) should approximately match their sphere influence. And with a sphere of influence this large, this goes far beyond the "contract" between individual parties only.

In some cases this kind of relationship auto-regulates itself (e.g., taking a small vs large credit in a bank): at larger scale, both parties are invested into maintaining a good relationship. The problem in this case is, any individual investment into any relationship with Google is just a drop in the ocean.

> But they've been entrenched for years now, completely dominate so many aspects of the web and get plenty of value out of even their free users.

That's why I store only 1 file on my Google Drive - a 10 GB encrypted blob (TrueCrypt partition).

Why not VeraCrypt, honest question?

I looked into that myself years ago, and honestly can't remember now why I made that decision back then :) Should probably document such stuff somewhere.

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