> A lot of things Google does -- a lot of the things people actually like about Google -- are possible only because it's a huge monolith. Divorce the ad-making money machine, and say goodbye to all the services consumers like that are nowhere near as profitable: gmail, maps, photos, chrome, android, translate, youtube, drive, waze, where do you think the money for this stuff all comes from?
That's not true. Google is using their ad money to subsidize those services and kill off competition. If Google weren't offering ad-supported, "good enough" services then even more people would pay for the alternatives.
Even with Google's anti-competitive behavior, people still pay for Dropbox, Fastmail, SmugMug, etc.
You're also assuming people understand and accept the level of privacy invasion that goes on when they use Google services. If people knew just how much information Google collects about them, and how they use it, I don't think they would be okay with it. Of course only Google can disclose that information, and you won't.
> Of course, if you're one of the uber technerds that thinks that Google is unabashedly evil and Linux is going to take over the desktop any day now, that probably sounds great to you. I just think the average consumer would have a different take on it.
That's great. Keep "average consumers" totally in the dark about the creepy ways your company is tracking their every move online, and then portray people who don't drink the koolaid as wacky conspiracy theorists and "uber technerds".
That's not true. Google is using their ad money to subsidize those services and kill off competition. If Google weren't offering ad-supported, "good enough" services then even more people would pay for the alternatives.
Even with Google's anti-competitive behavior, people still pay for Dropbox, Fastmail, SmugMug, etc.
You're also assuming people understand and accept the level of privacy invasion that goes on when they use Google services. If people knew just how much information Google collects about them, and how they use it, I don't think they would be okay with it. Of course only Google can disclose that information, and you won't.
> Of course, if you're one of the uber technerds that thinks that Google is unabashedly evil and Linux is going to take over the desktop any day now, that probably sounds great to you. I just think the average consumer would have a different take on it.
That's great. Keep "average consumers" totally in the dark about the creepy ways your company is tracking their every move online, and then portray people who don't drink the koolaid as wacky conspiracy theorists and "uber technerds".