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Comment by gibbonsrcool | Hacker News Reader

I predict Google will flounder on multiple fronts. They’ll either continue empty promises of a ChatGPT killer or release one that will be 2nd rate. Meanwhile more adoption of ChatGPT and the like will mean less search and less ad revenue. Azure and AWS will take more market share from GDP. They’ll release ad-blocker unfriendly chrome and users will switch to Firefox. YouTube will expand its trial of not operating with ad-blockers and a serious alternative will emerge, maybe Vimeo or maybe a newcomer. They’re the most user-hostile of the big tech companies and I want them to lose.

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>They’re the most user-hostile of the big tech companies and I want them to lose.

I disagree in two ways. I think Apple and MS are even more user-hostile (MS is putting ads in their OS...), but the reason I don't want Google to lose (first) is because then Apple would become even more powerful than they already are. I see Apple as more evil than Google, and also much more competent; Google is evil but pretty dumb frequently, which is a better kind of evil. A world without Google is a world where everyone is basically forced into being an Apple customer and iPhone user, like it or not. An Apple monopoly would be a terrible thing to live under, and I have zero faith that regulating bodies would handle this.

Unfortunately Apple and MS seem like they’re going strong into 2024.

Well the nice thing about MS, I'll say as a die-hard Linux user, is that these days, it's very very easy to not be a customer of MS or a user of their products to any great extent. If you don't want to use Windows, you really don't have to: it's very easy these days to just use Linux, and if you insist that you must use Windows because of some software, that's really on you at this point with so much stuff now on the web. No one is forcing you to play Madden MXLVI or whatever the latest Windows-only game is; it's purely a luxury.

>maybe Vimeo or a newcomer

I feel that Nebula was supposed to fill this slot, but failed. The clunky UX being chief among my complaints about it, otherwise it just seems to generally lack in content variety and appears to have trouble attracting new creators. I want to like it, but I just can't find a good reason to.

How will Vimeo or another YouTube competitor pay their infrastructure bill without ads or paying customers or 0% interest rates?

> They’re the most user-hostile of the big tech companies and I want them to lose.

I'm curious, why do you want them to lose given you aren't forced to use their services?

Monopolistic practices, dominating search engine market, anticompetitive behavior in online advertising, collusion with other tech companies on hiring practices, privacy concerns over user data collection, biased search results favoring its products, tax avoidance strategies in multiple countries, anti-union activities, censorship in certain countries to comply with local laws, allegations of workplace discrimination and harassment, misuse of market dominance in Android operating system.

Thanks for the elaboration

Pretty much the recipe of all big companies strategy ;-)

not more hostile than Ubisoft, i hope all their old game source codes get leaked in 2024

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