Many of us are still upset about Reader. It definitely felt like a watershed moment between the old cool Google who sent pizzas to hackers and had clean fast web design and weren't evil.
I'd be so glad now to give up on Google and all its enshittified shit. I could give up things that are still super useful and I get value from every day: YouTube, Gmail, Play Services, Drive, Maps. But I don't think I could give them all up at once. I've been trying to migrate to Proton and OpenStreetMap and some kind of real Linux phone etc, I don't even mind if I have to fiddle around before everything works. The trouble is that the claws are in, but they're not in me.
Remember when Google proudly didn't advertise themselves? They got to critical mass through word of mouth, from having a compellingly better product. Now what they have is network effects and locking. They used to appeal to developers and techies because and that ended up making the services better for everyone. Now like all the other tech giants they have PHB's optimizing for the next millisecond of attention and Microdollar of ad revenue from a lowest-common-denominator victim.
Google is so big that it's a significant part of life for a significant proportion of the world. When Google is shit it moves the needle on net human suffering. I think the UN should be focussing on prevent war and trying to salvage our environment, but if they aren't going to do that then it might be rational to just form a worldwide consumer group to take on megacorps.
I'd be so glad now to give up on Google and all its enshittified shit. I could give up things that are still super useful and I get value from every day: YouTube, Gmail, Play Services, Drive, Maps. But I don't think I could give them all up at once. I've been trying to migrate to Proton and OpenStreetMap and some kind of real Linux phone etc, I don't even mind if I have to fiddle around before everything works. The trouble is that the claws are in, but they're not in me.
Remember when Google proudly didn't advertise themselves? They got to critical mass through word of mouth, from having a compellingly better product. Now what they have is network effects and locking. They used to appeal to developers and techies because and that ended up making the services better for everyone. Now like all the other tech giants they have PHB's optimizing for the next millisecond of attention and Microdollar of ad revenue from a lowest-common-denominator victim.
Google is so big that it's a significant part of life for a significant proportion of the world. When Google is shit it moves the needle on net human suffering. I think the UN should be focussing on prevent war and trying to salvage our environment, but if they aren't going to do that then it might be rational to just form a worldwide consumer group to take on megacorps.