Google’s story over the last two decades has been a tale as old as time: enshittification for growth. The once-beloved startup—with its unofficial “Don’t Be Evil” motto—has instead become a major Internet monopolist, as a federal judge ruled on Monday, dominating the market for online search. Google is also well-known for its data-harvesting practices, for constantly killing off products, and for facilitating the rise of brain-cell-destroying YouTubers who make me Fear for Today’s Youth. (Maybe that last one is just me?)
Google’s rapid rise from “scrappy search engine with doodles” to “dystopic mega-corporation” has been remarkable in many ways, especially when you consider just how much goodwill the company squandered so quickly. Along the way, though, Google has achieved one unexpected result: In a divided America, it offers just about everyone something to hate.
Here are just a few of the players hating Google today.
its a human flaw… insatiable greed.
we distilled this greed and removed all actual responsibility creating an entity, ‘the stock market’. this well of irresponsible greed has reached a singularity… a point of no return. we are all too dependent on this terrible thing and so it cant be removed.
the majority of us just get to suffer while being told ‘theres no other way’
we cant have nice things because humans are just so fucking greedy and incapable of controlling that greed.
No, it’s a capitalist flaw. Capitalism is not an intrinsic trait of humanity. We can create systems that have effective self-regulation and appropriate feedback loops. It’s just that most countries, for one reason or another, haven’t really tried.
I disagree, I think it is basic human/biologic that drives us to grab up resources and hoard them to ensure survival/reproduction/future generations. Capitalism is just a vehicle in which we are capable of expressing that biological greed on a global scale.
I’d argue that capitalism is unnatural because even if we work from the assumption that resource hoarding is natural, it’s also necessary to take into account the fact that evolutionarily, humans got to where we are via traits like altruism, cooperation and forming communities. Capitalism is far from natural — it’s an insidious subversion of human nature
All negative basic human instincts are like this though, but it’s greed that we allow to grow unfettered. Anger is considered socially acceptable until you go berserk and start killing people and breaking things. Lust/sex is fine, until you start humping everyone and everything you see in the street. Greed has no upper bound like these though. And it’s high time that we started imposing some sort of control to stop this growth.
we cant have nice things because humans are just so fucking greedy and incapable of controlling that greed.
That’s not completely true though! One thing that a lot of people forget about Google is that they didn’t have to become a publicly traded for-profit company. A lot of people around 2002-2004-ish saw Google’s meteoric rise and wondered what path they were going to take. Some speculated/hoped that they would go the Wikipedia route and become a service that existed for the public good instead of a for-profit venture.
We all know what happened after. The pursuit of profit inevitably leads all companies to becoming sociopathic and evil. They didn’t have to be this way. And this is true for lots of tech startups. I wish we had seen more of them become wikipedias instead of googles.
It’s also worth pointing out that the original founders did want to make a company that was good and not evil. They tried to succeed by creating legitimately good products, and not screwing over their users. They did make mistakes along the way, but their intentions were at least good. The major problems started (as they usually do), when the second CEO took charge of the company, and it was evident that he had not clue whatsoever how to create a product. All Sundar Pichai knows how to do is suck as much blood as he can out of a stone. But Google’s founders are not blameless here: they were the ones that set the corporate structure up this way, and they were the ones that got bored and decided to fuck off. And they cheated on their taxes the way all corporations do, so no matter how good their intentions were, they were still pretty awful people.
The lesson is never trust any corporation ever. A lot of people fell for their schtick and feel stuck now. The cohort of users on this fediverse platform are gonna trend towards more anti-corporate and more tech savvy. The best thing we can be right now is gracious towards those realizing a titch too late how fucked everything is
People do upload to other sites, especially when YouTube won’t host it, but sadly sometimes it’s banned for a good reason.
Cody Doctorow talks about this. I won’t quote the link because the whole text is basically that, why people stick to hostile platforms.
Hate Google ain’t enough, plebs need to deny Google profit.
That’s how you hurt a parasite.
I’m currently de-Googling my life. Moving all my services over to Proton, testing other search engines, etc. Trying to slowly cut out/replace all services that Google provides me.
Oh, and I’m sticking with Firefox with Ublock Origin, to ensure Google can’t ever advertise to me, even incidentally.
I’m not fully de-Googling, however I have been migrating things that Google does badly over to other services. Kagi for search was the latest, and admittedly hardest mentally for me to do. Not because the search engine itself isn’t fantastic (it is), but I’ve been using Google since its inception when I stopped asking Jeeves or Hotbot. Just feels weird to jump ship, but I’m so tired of how bad and enshitified their search has become that I just can’t do it anymore.
I actually have a Proton acct already but only use the VPN. Sounds like it’s time to look further into the other offerings.
AskJeeves and Hotbot! Man, that takes me back. I also enjoyed Excite and Infoseek back in the pre-Google days.
Proton’s top tier service for individuals (Proton Unlimited) is only $7.99/month if you pay for 2 years of service. Gives you full access to all their services.
Proton just announced last month that they’re turning the company into a nonprofit organization, because security is more important to them than making money. That’s why their services are dirt-cheap; they want to ensure it’s affordable for everyone, and the only reason they collect money at all is to keep the servers online.
I stopped using protonmail as moving thr data out and exporting / archiving old emails is nightmare. I use simple mailbox.org and it’s fine. I use on desktop pop3 and imap on mobile. I remove my emails automatically from servers older than 30 days
Why only deny Google? Attack them all with a blow to the stock market. The further it ticks down the more they bleed.
yes, there are many ways to do this. once you ID corpo as a bad faith actor, deny them engagement/profit.
this is the the crux of the strat. however it only works for discretionary spending category. rent, food etc is hard to avoid but there are still some choices.
vote with that wallet folks, it is the ol’ reliable of them all
Hopefully DeGoogleing will go a bit like the cable “Cord Cutters” did in terms of headlines over time:
- Is cutting cable feasible?
- Some are are finding solutions to lower their cable bills.
- Industry denies cord cutters are impacting profit.
- Providers cling to sports broadcasts as a way to short-circut cord cutters.
- Are young people the “never-cable” generation?
- Here’s where to watch the Olympics online.
Of course, streaming is worse than cable now… so lets learn from that.
“streaming is worse than cable now” is it though?
I stream for weeks on end without a single ad, watching only what I want. I go to an older person’s house and I hear the same friggin commercial jingles, the same canned studio laughter, and shows that are designed for the stupidest common denominator.
I grew up in the era of Saturday morning cartoons. My brain was liquidified on cereal commercials. I won’t allow cable into my house under any circumstances.
But I do agree that we should learn from too easily replacing the working with the next big thing without any regulations on how the next big thing is allowed to operate
I stream for weeks on end without a single ad
But that’s now changing. The bottom tiers of many (most?) streaming apps include ads, and it’s not a stretch to think that they’ll include ads on the higher tiers eventually, or just increase prices until people downgrade to ad-supported tiers. Yeah, you can use an ad-blocker, but you could also use a DVR for cable that also filters out ads.
I’m bailing on both and just buying physical media again. I hope that doesn’t die out, but I’m done with paying for subscriptions. We don’t watch a ton, so I’m probably going to save money this way.
I wish we had a streaming equivalent of a DVR, then I might actually want streaming again.
“streaming is worse than cable now”
Ironically, pirating has never been easier lol
Between private torrent trackers and Usenet, pirating has never been easier. I love it!
A lot of people still don’t know.
Some people don’t even know what Reddit is.
Now, Reddit is charging Google for priority access to its posts (article - only Google and Brave will show those results in the near future).
Perhaps Google will start charging money to use it also.
Now, Reddit is charging Google for priority access to its posts
If the idiots at Google hadn’t shut down DejaNews they would have already owned a discussion forum more popular than reddit.
