A Boring Dystopia

You can avoid Google pretty successfully. There are de-googled android or Linux phones out there (or Apple), other search engines, browsers that aren't chrome based like Firefox, a million LLM companies to choose from, service providers depending on the area etc. and you can avoid most of the ads and trackers with a couple of browser extensions.

The one you basically can't avoid no matter what you do is Amazon because basically everything runs on AWS.

Amazon's cloud infrastructure is often overlooked but it's responsible for handling most of the traffic on the internet that's not from China and even there they have subsidiaries that conform with regulations.

Thank you, bluecheck with AI generated profile picture

You spelled "problem" wrong.

Google is not the Internet. People are leaving Google search behind because it doesn’t work worth a shit anymore. SpaceX has nothing to do with the internet. Anthropic has plenty of competitors.

YouTube is the only thing on this list that is close to not having any competition. There have been platforms that tried but only TikTok has approached anything near its market dominance.

It would still be nice to see Google broken up, but they will probably implode at some point instead. Much like Microsoft is doing now.

Google is only the internet of you use all those things?

Use another search site. Don't use gmaps, Gmail or drive. There are tons of alternatives to these.

No, but their attempts to make people believe they are have apparently been quite successful

I almost wish some antitrust bust would force Google to part ways with Android, I'm just afraid of who'd the new owner be

I have all but YT blacklisted without issues.

And a monopoly

That’s like saying “AOL is the internet” when it was popular. Sure for a lot of people, it was the only thing they knew, but there was CompuServe, Prodigy and a whole host of others that you don’t even have to worry about AOL. Google is just AOL in a different form.

Why hasn't Google been broken up?

Okay, so let's first stop demonising the people who try to get away from Google, and Microsoft, and companies like them.

First let's stop pretending Linux is a "free" "alternative" to Windows. It's not for cheapskates and it's not for people who failed at Windows so they need an alternative. It is very much its own thing, and its use is valid. In fact, there are a lot of reasons Linux is the best operating system out there (insofar as it is not an operating system, it's a kernel, Linux pedants are a thing, but, we all know what is meant). There are also a few reasons it's the worst, but they mostly come down to users not willing to learn what it is and isn't, and not using it properly. Linux is actually pretty powerful, but like any powerful tool, it can be turned against you if you don't do some simple things. Fortunately, there are a lot of people who can help you do that. Just don't call it an operating system or they'll correct you first.

Second, how about we also stop pretending Apple is just as bad as Google and Microsoft. Gods forbid someone wants a computer where they're the customer and not the product. I'm mostly speaking as a Mac user here. I am also an iPhone user, but that platform's harder to defend. Sure, it's still more private than Android, but that's not a high bar. They both collect telemetry, but Google will tunnel around your security software to get ads on your device because ads are the point of Google. They are an advertising company. Paying iPhone money for a phone that spies on you, even if you're gonna wipe the OS and install a privacy-based Android fork (like Graphene), you're still giving the advertising company money. The best computer is probably one you build yourself and Windows never touches the storage device (which ships blank); you install Linux on it. But if you don't want to go through all of that, a $500 Mac mini is a thousand times better than a Windows machine. iPhone... is kinda okay if you have other Apple stuff, and it's more private than Android, but lack of good sideloading options, a shitty keyboard, and a failed AI platform (though some, myself included, like that) mean that while it's better than the next best option, it's still far from ideal. I will also add that, unlike Samsung, they haven't demanded you allow them to sell your data to anyone to continue using Apple Health, like Samsung Health did a year or two ago. Like I'm a guy, I'm not that worried, but every woman using Samsung Health today and using the cycle tracker on it should be worried about right-wing political groups buying their data to potentially weaponise against them. I won't say "Apple would never," but Apple hasn't yet.

Third, we need to promote and use viable alternatives to Google, Microsoft, Meta, and the rest. Talk about them IRL, post about them online, and, if you have the skills, contribute in some way. Word of mouth is big but some people up here can write code. I'm not a coder, I'm a gamer, and I'm always hearing about projects needing code help, art help, stuff like that.

googol is garbage, always has been. I have never used any of their shit services and block all googol trash from my systems and web. They cannot be the internet because I have never had to use them.