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The conclusion I've come to regarding Google is that you just have to accept it for now. The services that they provide are so above and beyond anything from an

The conclusion I've come to regarding Google is that you just have to accept it for now. The services that they provide are so above and beyond anything from any other provider that to not use them puts you at a great disadvantage. Google search is an order of magnitude above the competition. There is no serious alternative to Google maps. The level of integration that Google Calendar has with practically everything is unmatched. As such I've placed my trust for now in Google and only Google. That's the key. I've decided to collocate all of my privacy concerns to one single company which I feel is at least moderately trustworthy, and which supports an open Web. Because in the end, I do not think that Google is fundamentally evil. Facebook on the other hand provides absolutely nothing of value to anyone really. The entirety of their service can be replaced with an IRC client and a free image host. The walled garden they have cultivated will be laughed at in the future the same way we see AOL now. I am completely convinced that they are a fundamentally evil company. The sooner the world realizes that it is nothing more than a creepy spying/advertisement platform the better.

tempodox 9y ago
Google uses the information they collect on you to target their ads (and who knows what else), just as Facebook does. They happen to have a bit more window dressing that is of actual utility. All that makes them is a bit smarter but not fundamentally better than FB.
- Zarath 9y ago
  s/bit/lot
dTal 9y ago
Neither is "fundamentally evil", and also both are. They are both corporations attempting to keep you in their ecosystem, using similar methods, that fundamentally make their money from targeting ads to you. There's no evil overlord at the top of either company (I hope) - their evilness must be judged by how likely each of them are to lead us into a techno-dystopia. And the more you consolidate to Google, the closer they become to The Corporation from every dystopian sci-fi ever. Also, Facebook does provide something of value, though the cost is too great: they are the centralised provider of the One True Social Graph, and by extension your True Identity, which has numerous uses and no decentralised competitor. It's increasingly popular to use Facebook login on third party sites, because it mitigates to some extent the creation of throwaway accounts, which was hitherto considered a largely intractable problem.
- aphextron 9y ago
  > There's no evil overlord at the top of either company (I hope) We'll have to disagree here. I think Zuckerberg is an evil, amoral person to his core. This hardly needs reposting, but I can't recall Brin or Page ever going on the record calling their users "dumb fucks".[0] [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/embarrassing-and-damaging-zuckerberg-ims-confirmed-by-zuckerberg-the-new-yorker-2010-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/embarrassing-and-damaging-zuc...
  - dTal 9y ago
    Sure. And former Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously remarked on the subject of privacy, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Whatever you think of the people, corporations are not people and their behaviour is only partially directed by them. The most reliable predictor of their direction is their bottom line, and the intelligence of the people they hire to improve it. Bear in mind that Google was so self-aware of the abuse potential of their position that they adopted "Don't be evil" as a corporate motto - until they dropped it on the grounds that it was underspecified, which strikes me as a quintessential example of corporate amoralism - evil, if you will.
    - timrichard 9y ago
      Personally - I'm very aware that both track people obsessively, and I don't really go in for cheerleading US megacorps. However - Facebook feels a lot more evil to me. It's the constant cat and mouse game. I go in periodically to tighten my security settings and close off more notifications, and they find new vectors to spam me into coming back into their walled garden. Their "frictionless sharing" always feels more like "frictionless privacy betrayal", as it's totally in their interest to disseminate whatever info they can gain as widely as possible. To blur the line between private and public for their benefit. I don't close my account completely, because I go in once a year to thank people for the birthday greets. They find 21st century AOL more convenient for this than email. In contrast, I'm one of those oddballs who still uses Google+. Almost exclusively with remote family, to share photos that we've taken during the week to talk about during a hangout. The default sharing "circle" is limited to close family, and that works well. Feels like a pretty different experience from FB to me. Plus, I think FB's aggressive cultivation of online relationships erodes old meatspace ones. It's human nature that just casually swiping on your smartphone screen for a status refresh and dopamine hit from your sofa is going to be easier than arranging to meet groups of friends in person. I've certainly found this with some people who live in the same city as me. So I wouldn't say FB is useless - I think it's slightly worse than that.
leereeves 9y ago
> There is no serious alternative to Google maps. On an extended road trip last month I used both Google maps and Apple maps and found them roughly equivalent.
- gaius 9y ago
  Here (formerly Nokia) is very good. Bing maps is perfectly adequate.
- earenndil 9y ago
  Also look at openstreetmaps.
kuschku 9y ago
Here Maps is a serious competitor to Google maps, in many regiona being far superior. For Google calendar, almost any self hosted calendar service can easily compete with that. Email is also easy to run yourself, as is Google Photos. "Easy" meaning a task a CompSci student can accomplish during a summer or two of coding.
- giosch 9y ago
  You don't want to run your own mail/web server. At least, you do not want a lot of people doing it. Because most of the will get the security part wrong. Horribly wrong.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Well, some ISPs have in their contracts a free custom mail and webserver for every customer (for example, mine does). This obviously diversifies the options quite a bit.
    - jooke 9y ago
      Having my email or webserver tied to my ISP seems terrible. What happens if I want to switch?
      - kuschku 9y ago
        That's the way it always used to be - for example, many americans still pay a small fee to AOL. But you can just move it to any other hoster.
- jsz0 9y ago
  Apple Maps has also become a serious competitor. Apple is still playing catch-up in some ways but every year they keep closing the gap further. Almost every 'catch up' feature they have added is as good or better than Google's implementation. In the same time period Google Maps hasn't improved much and has taken some steps backwards in UI.
jsz0 9y ago
> The services that they provide are so above and beyond anything from any other provider that to not use them puts you at a great disadvantage. Five years ago I would have agreed but at this point most of the advantages offered by Google's services are non-essential conveniences. Google's competition has caught up faster than they have added new 'must have' features.
ionised 9y ago
> The conclusion I've come to regarding Google is that you just have to accept it for now. The services that they provide are so above and beyond anything from any other provider that to not use them puts you at a great disadvantage. Dear lord this isn't even remotely true. I haven't used any Google services save Maps for nearly 5 years now and I only used Maps a few times when I first learned to drive before realising that OSMand and HERE Maps were actually better. That's just one example. There are alternatives to pretty much everything Google offers, some even better. The only thing Google offers that isn't matched is seamless integration between its various services, but if you are not heavily invested in the Google ecosystem to begin with, or are not resistant to change then its not an issue at all to move away from it. Honestly the most dofficult part of stopping using Google is switching all your email addresses over for the various online services you use. That takes a few hours at most.
rmc 9y ago
> There is no serious alternative to Google maps. Depends a lot on the region, but in many places, OpenStreetMap is better than Google Maps.

tempodox 9y ago

Google uses the information they collect on you to target their ads (and who knows what else), just as Facebook does. They happen to have a bit more window dressing that is of actual utility. All that makes them is a bit smarter but not fundamentally better than FB.

Zarath 9y ago
s/bit/lot

dTal 9y ago

Neither is "fundamentally evil", and also both are. They are both corporations attempting to keep you in their ecosystem, using similar methods, that fundamentally make their money from targeting ads to you. There's no evil overlord at the top of either company (I hope) - their evilness must be judged by how likely each of them are to lead us into a techno-dystopia. And the more you consolidate to Google, the closer they become to The Corporation from every dystopian sci-fi ever. Also, Facebook does provide something of value, though the cost is too great: they are the centralised provider of the One True Social Graph, and by extension your True Identity, which has numerous uses and no decentralised competitor. It's increasingly popular to use Facebook login on third party sites, because it mitigates to some extent the creation of throwaway accounts, which was hitherto considered a largely intractable problem.

aphextron 9y ago
> There's no evil overlord at the top of either company (I hope) We'll have to disagree here. I think Zuckerberg is an evil, amoral person to his core. This hardly needs reposting, but I can't recall Brin or Page ever going on the record calling their users "dumb fucks".[0] [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/embarrassing-and-damaging-zuckerberg-ims-confirmed-by-zuckerberg-the-new-yorker-2010-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/embarrassing-and-damaging-zuc...
- dTal 9y ago
  Sure. And former Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously remarked on the subject of privacy, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Whatever you think of the people, corporations are not people and their behaviour is only partially directed by them. The most reliable predictor of their direction is their bottom line, and the intelligence of the people they hire to improve it. Bear in mind that Google was so self-aware of the abuse potential of their position that they adopted "Don't be evil" as a corporate motto - until they dropped it on the grounds that it was underspecified, which strikes me as a quintessential example of corporate amoralism - evil, if you will.
  - timrichard 9y ago
    Personally - I'm very aware that both track people obsessively, and I don't really go in for cheerleading US megacorps. However - Facebook feels a lot more evil to me. It's the constant cat and mouse game. I go in periodically to tighten my security settings and close off more notifications, and they find new vectors to spam me into coming back into their walled garden. Their "frictionless sharing" always feels more like "frictionless privacy betrayal", as it's totally in their interest to disseminate whatever info they can gain as widely as possible. To blur the line between private and public for their benefit. I don't close my account completely, because I go in once a year to thank people for the birthday greets. They find 21st century AOL more convenient for this than email. In contrast, I'm one of those oddballs who still uses Google+. Almost exclusively with remote family, to share photos that we've taken during the week to talk about during a hangout. The default sharing "circle" is limited to close family, and that works well. Feels like a pretty different experience from FB to me. Plus, I think FB's aggressive cultivation of online relationships erodes old meatspace ones. It's human nature that just casually swiping on your smartphone screen for a status refresh and dopamine hit from your sofa is going to be easier than arranging to meet groups of friends in person. I've certainly found this with some people who live in the same city as me. So I wouldn't say FB is useless - I think it's slightly worse than that.

leereeves 9y ago

> There is no serious alternative to Google maps. On an extended road trip last month I used both Google maps and Apple maps and found them roughly equivalent.

gaius 9y ago
Here (formerly Nokia) is very good. Bing maps is perfectly adequate.
earenndil 9y ago
Also look at openstreetmaps.

kuschku 9y ago

Here Maps is a serious competitor to Google maps, in many regiona being far superior. For Google calendar, almost any self hosted calendar service can easily compete with that. Email is also easy to run yourself, as is Google Photos. "Easy" meaning a task a CompSci student can accomplish during a summer or two of coding.

giosch 9y ago
You don't want to run your own mail/web server. At least, you do not want a lot of people doing it. Because most of the will get the security part wrong. Horribly wrong.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Well, some ISPs have in their contracts a free custom mail and webserver for every customer (for example, mine does). This obviously diversifies the options quite a bit.
  - jooke 9y ago
    Having my email or webserver tied to my ISP seems terrible. What happens if I want to switch?
    - kuschku 9y ago
      That's the way it always used to be - for example, many americans still pay a small fee to AOL. But you can just move it to any other hoster.
jsz0 9y ago
Apple Maps has also become a serious competitor. Apple is still playing catch-up in some ways but every year they keep closing the gap further. Almost every 'catch up' feature they have added is as good or better than Google's implementation. In the same time period Google Maps hasn't improved much and has taken some steps backwards in UI.

jsz0 9y ago

> The services that they provide are so above and beyond anything from any other provider that to not use them puts you at a great disadvantage. Five years ago I would have agreed but at this point most of the advantages offered by Google's services are non-essential conveniences. Google's competition has caught up faster than they have added new 'must have' features.

ionised 9y ago

> The conclusion I've come to regarding Google is that you just have to accept it for now. The services that they provide are so above and beyond anything from any other provider that to not use them puts you at a great disadvantage. Dear lord this isn't even remotely true. I haven't used any Google services save Maps for nearly 5 years now and I only used Maps a few times when I first learned to drive before realising that OSMand and HERE Maps were actually better. That's just one example. There are alternatives to pretty much everything Google offers, some even better. The only thing Google offers that isn't matched is seamless integration between its various services, but if you are not heavily invested in the Google ecosystem to begin with, or are not resistant to change then its not an issue at all to move away from it. Honestly the most dofficult part of stopping using Google is switching all your email addresses over for the various online services you use. That takes a few hours at most.

rmc 9y ago

> There is no serious alternative to Google maps. Depends a lot on the region, but in many places, OpenStreetMap is better than Google Maps.