8 ms·

Exactly my thoughts. I am unfathomably angry and I want to contribute to any effort to dismantle Google as a company.

by jchw 5mo ago

pietervdvn 5mo ago
Yeah, same. It is hard; we start to need a collective boycott. We can all do our part, by using their products as little as possible, contribute to open alternatives (OpenStreetMap, Fediverse, Linux, Nextcloud...) and by stimulating our (non-techie!) friends and family. But it is a lot of work :(
- deaux 5mo ago
  It's less work than 10 years ago. So many much more mature alternatives.
  - buran77 5mo ago
    The technical challenge is actually the smaller one. The real one is to get people to care. Don't be tricked by the HN/techie bubble. Most people don't understand the problem, or don't see it as a problem because nothing smacked them in the face yet. Any attempts to explain it makes you sound like a lunatic to some, or just a bit of a worrier to others. Whether it's targeted ads, or training AI on their data, or verifying their age and implicitly identity, or "fraud defense", most people happily take it in exchange for a convenient freebie which is why things keep escalating. It's understandable, people are assaulted with all kinds of abuses from every direction. There are more immediate threats that they can grasp more easily so this stuff has to wait its turn.
    - JoshTriplett 5mo ago
      > Most people don't understand the problem, or don't see it as a problem because nothing smacked them in the face yet. Or don't approach the world with a fundamental mindset of having agency to (help) fix things they see as broken. Just because people see something as bad doesn't mean they inherently see a bright flashing line from that to "so I should do something about it rather than accept it".
    - deaux 5mo ago
      "Technical" isn't really what I meant in the first place. It's about convenience/UX. Lots of OSS has been technically great but very lacking in that part, understandably. The prime recent example of this is gamers. I've seen many people say a version of this: "I tried Linux before but it was too complicated/didn't run most games/when I ran into something I had no idea how to solve it, so I just went straight back to Windows. Now I installed Bazzite cause I was fed up with Win11 and I'm super happy with it. If I do run into a problem I just ask AI and it solves it". I've genuinely seen dozens of comments similar to this. The fact is that there needs to be a very convenient and user-friendly alternative ready to go for the moment that some people do start to care. You need both just as much as each other. And until very recently, those alternatives didn't exist, not at the level of convenience required.
      - buran77 5mo ago
        For me "technical" meant relating to the technology (tool, product, interface, ecosystem, etc.) rather than the person.
        deaux 5mo ago
        Fair enough. Then as I said, the technical part has been a huge barrier because it has prevented the majority of those who do care from migrating. That changing is really nice, and I'm convinced it's partially behind the acceleration of Google and friends taking over the internet with attestation and such as this post is about. Just doing a casual search will show you so many people migrating off of managed SaaS to self-hosted solutions and from closed source platforms to OSS ones over the last 12 month, the acceleration is massive and it's due to the combination of LLM themselves and the quality of these things going up. Just 3 years ago it was still very niche, common on HN but near unheard of outside of it. A lot of people who always wanted to do it but just didn't have the time. The SaaS stocks getting crushed isn't just all vibes, there's a real move behind it.
- 7734128 5mo ago
  It should not be a "vote with your wallet" situation. It should be governments shattering that organization into appropriately sized companies.
  - quantummagic 5mo ago
    I wouldn't hold your breath. The government is reliant on them for surveillance, censorship, and propaganda. It is a synergistic relationship, not adversarial.
  - troupo 5mo ago
    These days every time a government as much as thinks of imponging on a supranational corporation's right to do whatever the hell it pleases you'll hear no end of cries ranging from "overregulation" to "tyranny". For an example, see EU's GDPR, DMA etc.
  - SilverElfin 5mo ago
    We cannot vote with our wallets because there’s no real competition. That’s the problem with the big tech companies and other monopolistic companies in other areas.
    - robin_reala 5mo ago
      In what area is there no real competition? I can think of real competition in everything Google does with the possible exception of YouTube.
      - SilverElfin 5mo ago
        Everything that gets money from ads. The network effects are too strong for competition against their ads platform and their ability to do targeted advertising based on data only they have. You can’t build a new ads platform and then use that to monetize your company’s other services, because the existing ad networks are so mature and established. Phones. Your choice is Apple or Google. As you said, YouTube. Again, they have users and creators in one place, so it’s hard for a new platform to compete. There are also a lot of enterprise contracts that bundle many things together. Like cloud and their workplace apps (whatever it is now called). But also, just their size is a problem. Look at their AI story. First off, many customers get forced into packages where they get Gemini included as part of the bundle (which means they’re paying for it automatically and have less of a reason to pay for something else). But also - Google was slow to build useful products here. Even though they are late and made many failed attempts like Bard, they can afford to take losses for years that no small company - or maybe even large companies that aren’t mega corps - can absorb. Those other competitors would go out of business and have to be careful and move slowly in spending. But Google’s capital lets them make mistake after mistake but still compete and eventually win. So it’s not a fair competition.
- pessimizer 5mo ago
  > Yeah, same. It is hard; we start to need a collective boycott. Feelgood slactivism. They don't care about your boycott. They finance their own alternatives because they know what makes you shut up.
- kogasa240p 5mo ago
  IMO the biggest issue is that some non-tech people will occasionally be straight up hostile and will whine about not having "features", but then again it only takes a small amount of people taking action inflict real change. Also medium term we need to start making phones (smart OR dumb) that are FOSS as possible. > Linux Open/FreeBSD too, we need to have more redundancy.
- afpx 5mo ago
  They're trying to block your ability to boycott. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws
  - BizarroLand 5mo ago
    Those are specifically targeted to boycotts of Israel, which ties it to anti-racial discrimination law.
    - afpx 5mo ago
      Exactly, didn’t you see who is behind this?
leoc 5mo ago
But remember: once again, don't simply get angry at Google the institution. Get angry at Page and Brin personally. They have the power to prevent this, a power they were careful to preserve when they gave Google its IPO. They are fully responsible for Google's choices here. But, partly because they aren't constantly jumping up and down drawing attention to themselves on social media, they've tended to escape the same personal scrutiny given to eg. Elon Musk. That needs to end.
greatgib 5mo ago
On that topic, I would highly recommend you to switch to Kagi! Search is still their workhorse for ad revenue. Less search, less users, in addition to users now just asking chatgpt and co, will hurt them well
- tom1337 5mo ago
  Wouldn’t installing an adblocker basically hurt them as much / more as I still cost them compute but don't get them that sweet ad money?
  - JoshTriplett 5mo ago
    You think systems that have adblockers installed will keep being able to pass WEI / Google Cloud Fraud Defence checks? This is an attestation scheme. Attestation is about controlling what software you are and aren't allowed to run. If a future version of this allows desktop browsers rather than just phones, it will almost certainly try to do similar forms of attestation, and prevent you from controlling your own software stack.
SilverElfin 5mo ago
The problem is this type of controlling move, that will be used to benefit their company, is one among many things a company like Google can do that is unethical. They won’t stop. They are too powerful and can get away with it repeatedly. Even if this one thing is stopped, there will always be another dark pattern or another privacy violation or another anti-competitive thing. We really need brand new legislation that makes it much easier to break up companies that are too big, and also to tax mega corporations at a much higher rate than all other companies. Then we can have fair competition and the power of choice. But the existing laws end up with no real consequence for these companies, and even if there’s some slap on the wrist, it takes years in court. New laws must make it very fast and low cost for society to take action.
revscat 5mo ago
[dead]

Exactly my thoughts. I am unfathomably angry and I want to contribute to any effort to dismantle Google as a company.

by jchw 5mo ago

Exactly my thoughts. I am unfathomably angry and I want to contribute to any effort to dismantle Google as a company.

Yeah, same. It is hard; we start to need a collective boycott. We can all do our part, by using their products as little as possible, contribute to open alternatives (OpenStreetMap, Fediverse, Linux, Nextcloud...) and by stimulating our (non-techie!) friends and family. But it is a lot of work :(

deaux 5mo ago
It's less work than 10 years ago. So many much more mature alternatives.
- buran77 5mo ago
  The technical challenge is actually the smaller one. The real one is to get people to care. Don't be tricked by the HN/techie bubble. Most people don't understand the problem, or don't see it as a problem because nothing smacked them in the face yet. Any attempts to explain it makes you sound like a lunatic to some, or just a bit of a worrier to others. Whether it's targeted ads, or training AI on their data, or verifying their age and implicitly identity, or "fraud defense", most people happily take it in exchange for a convenient freebie which is why things keep escalating. It's understandable, people are assaulted with all kinds of abuses from every direction. There are more immediate threats that they can grasp more easily so this stuff has to wait its turn.
  - JoshTriplett 5mo ago
    > Most people don't understand the problem, or don't see it as a problem because nothing smacked them in the face yet. Or don't approach the world with a fundamental mindset of having agency to (help) fix things they see as broken. Just because people see something as bad doesn't mean they inherently see a bright flashing line from that to "so I should do something about it rather than accept it".
  - deaux 5mo ago
    "Technical" isn't really what I meant in the first place. It's about convenience/UX. Lots of OSS has been technically great but very lacking in that part, understandably. The prime recent example of this is gamers. I've seen many people say a version of this: "I tried Linux before but it was too complicated/didn't run most games/when I ran into something I had no idea how to solve it, so I just went straight back to Windows. Now I installed Bazzite cause I was fed up with Win11 and I'm super happy with it. If I do run into a problem I just ask AI and it solves it". I've genuinely seen dozens of comments similar to this. The fact is that there needs to be a very convenient and user-friendly alternative ready to go for the moment that some people do start to care. You need both just as much as each other. And until very recently, those alternatives didn't exist, not at the level of convenience required.
    - buran77 5mo ago
      For me "technical" meant relating to the technology (tool, product, interface, ecosystem, etc.) rather than the person.
      - deaux 5mo ago
        Fair enough. Then as I said, the technical part has been a huge barrier because it has prevented the majority of those who do care from migrating. That changing is really nice, and I'm convinced it's partially behind the acceleration of Google and friends taking over the internet with attestation and such as this post is about. Just doing a casual search will show you so many people migrating off of managed SaaS to self-hosted solutions and from closed source platforms to OSS ones over the last 12 month, the acceleration is massive and it's due to the combination of LLM themselves and the quality of these things going up. Just 3 years ago it was still very niche, common on HN but near unheard of outside of it. A lot of people who always wanted to do it but just didn't have the time. The SaaS stocks getting crushed isn't just all vibes, there's a real move behind it.
7734128 5mo ago
It should not be a "vote with your wallet" situation. It should be governments shattering that organization into appropriately sized companies.
- quantummagic 5mo ago
  I wouldn't hold your breath. The government is reliant on them for surveillance, censorship, and propaganda. It is a synergistic relationship, not adversarial.
- troupo 5mo ago
  These days every time a government as much as thinks of imponging on a supranational corporation's right to do whatever the hell it pleases you'll hear no end of cries ranging from "overregulation" to "tyranny". For an example, see EU's GDPR, DMA etc.
- SilverElfin 5mo ago
  We cannot vote with our wallets because there’s no real competition. That’s the problem with the big tech companies and other monopolistic companies in other areas.
  - robin_reala 5mo ago
    In what area is there no real competition? I can think of real competition in everything Google does with the possible exception of YouTube.
    - SilverElfin 5mo ago
      Everything that gets money from ads. The network effects are too strong for competition against their ads platform and their ability to do targeted advertising based on data only they have. You can’t build a new ads platform and then use that to monetize your company’s other services, because the existing ad networks are so mature and established. Phones. Your choice is Apple or Google. As you said, YouTube. Again, they have users and creators in one place, so it’s hard for a new platform to compete. There are also a lot of enterprise contracts that bundle many things together. Like cloud and their workplace apps (whatever it is now called). But also, just their size is a problem. Look at their AI story. First off, many customers get forced into packages where they get Gemini included as part of the bundle (which means they’re paying for it automatically and have less of a reason to pay for something else). But also - Google was slow to build useful products here. Even though they are late and made many failed attempts like Bard, they can afford to take losses for years that no small company - or maybe even large companies that aren’t mega corps - can absorb. Those other competitors would go out of business and have to be careful and move slowly in spending. But Google’s capital lets them make mistake after mistake but still compete and eventually win. So it’s not a fair competition.
pessimizer 5mo ago
> Yeah, same. It is hard; we start to need a collective boycott. Feelgood slactivism. They don't care about your boycott. They finance their own alternatives because they know what makes you shut up.
kogasa240p 5mo ago
IMO the biggest issue is that some non-tech people will occasionally be straight up hostile and will whine about not having "features", but then again it only takes a small amount of people taking action inflict real change. Also medium term we need to start making phones (smart OR dumb) that are FOSS as possible. > Linux Open/FreeBSD too, we need to have more redundancy.
afpx 5mo ago
They're trying to block your ability to boycott. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws
- BizarroLand 5mo ago
  Those are specifically targeted to boycotts of Israel, which ties it to anti-racial discrimination law.
  - afpx 5mo ago
    Exactly, didn’t you see who is behind this?

leoc 5mo ago

But remember: once again, don't simply get angry at Google the institution. Get angry at Page and Brin personally. They have the power to prevent this, a power they were careful to preserve when they gave Google its IPO. They are fully responsible for Google's choices here. But, partly because they aren't constantly jumping up and down drawing attention to themselves on social media, they've tended to escape the same personal scrutiny given to eg. Elon Musk. That needs to end.

greatgib 5mo ago

On that topic, I would highly recommend you to switch to Kagi! Search is still their workhorse for ad revenue. Less search, less users, in addition to users now just asking chatgpt and co, will hurt them well

tom1337 5mo ago
Wouldn’t installing an adblocker basically hurt them as much / more as I still cost them compute but don't get them that sweet ad money?
- JoshTriplett 5mo ago
  You think systems that have adblockers installed will keep being able to pass WEI / Google Cloud Fraud Defence checks? This is an attestation scheme. Attestation is about controlling what software you are and aren't allowed to run. If a future version of this allows desktop browsers rather than just phones, it will almost certainly try to do similar forms of attestation, and prevent you from controlling your own software stack.

SilverElfin 5mo ago

The problem is this type of controlling move, that will be used to benefit their company, is one among many things a company like Google can do that is unethical. They won’t stop. They are too powerful and can get away with it repeatedly. Even if this one thing is stopped, there will always be another dark pattern or another privacy violation or another anti-competitive thing. We really need brand new legislation that makes it much easier to break up companies that are too big, and also to tax mega corporations at a much higher rate than all other companies. Then we can have fair competition and the power of choice. But the existing laws end up with no real consequence for these companies, and even if there’s some slap on the wrist, it takes years in court. New laws must make it very fast and low cost for society to take action.

revscat 5mo ago

[dead]