There is a very obvious solution to that problem. Don't use Google services. I have seen that people who usually criticize Google the most (not saying there is

There is a very obvious solution to that problem. Don't use Google services. I have seen that people who usually criticize Google the most (not saying there is anything wrong with criticizing) are also one of their bigest users. There are a lot of reasons to not like MSFT's monopolistic business, they pulled (and still does) all types of dirty tricks, including buying out government official in third world countries so that they can sell MSFT's powered notebooks to children and one up "One laptop per child project". That's probably one of the least evil thing they did. If you can provide just one example of Google doing anything remotely sinister like that I would love to listen to it.* Google, in most cases, provides the best possible service with the best possible price (often free). Some of these services in all likelihood probably is not even profitable by any margin anytime soon - or if at all, ever. This causes companies that do provide similar services at a cost to improve what they do; otherwise they would do nothing and stay content with the way things are. Google drives innovations to their competition. IE9 and its improvements would not happen if there was no Chrome. Firefox would not rethink its approach (their next release concept looks almost like chrome) and improve in performance at the pace they are now. MSFT would not aggressively improve their OS performance with windows 7 to be functional on a netbook. (Some of us knew about Google OS way before it was officially announced, in all likelihood MSFT did too). Bing would not exist. While there are real concerns about privacy, in the days of online applications and services, privacy never existed in first place, regardless whose service you are using. I think Google contribution far outweighs its negative points. However I can understand why some HN crowd can feel threatened by them. ------------------------------------------------- * There was one incident in China I can remember.