You've used their maps, their gmail, their youtube, their search engine and possibly their web browser for decades. But, there is something to be said for not supporting monopolies, and Google - or technically, Alphabet, their parent company - monopolizes all of these areas, with good reason. Back in the day, they cut through the BS that was the status quo for search engines: bad results, too many ads and invasive user interface designs. Sadly, they've nowadays more-or-less recreated those very conditions they sought to avoid. Their search results are riddled with ads, they front-and-center display their own text pulled from other websites, robbing those sites of ad revenue, and of course there's the ubiquitous AI nonsense. Which is famous for, amongst other things, recommending that people use craft glue to prevent the toppings from sliding off pizza.
Their web browser, Chrome, likewise cut through the BS when it was released, by presenting a no-nonsense minimal interface which people appreciated. However it's terms and conditions allow them to use and store your search and browsing history in various anonymized ways - and Google's connection to the international 5-eyes spy network (of which NZ is a part) is known and acknowledged by them. This isn't the time or place to go into details on that, but regardless of whether your browsing is innocuous, it feels somewhat tense to know that somewhere, someone *could* look in on your activities at any time.
Gmail harvests the text of your emails and uses it anonymously to direct appropriate advertising toward you. And their advertising is, bar-none, the most used advertising platform in the world, forming a micro-monopoly of it's own. Google Maps and the Android phone operating system both keep track of where you go and for how long, unless intentionally disabled. Sooooo I dunno. Google is the lesser evil of the mega-corps, but I'd still rather have them know too much about me, particularly with the current USA administration. What to do then? Find alternatives, obviously.
Firefox is a good alternative to Chrome. Openmaps and Apple Maps are quite usable. Recently I've been using Ecosia and DuckDuckGo as my search engines of choice, swapping back only occasionally to Google search when necessary. Vimeo is a viable alternative to Youtube, famous for supporting more-highbrow content than the typical youtuber fare. There are many alternatives for online storage, and, as explained in a previous article Google Drive is the slowest of them all. Protonmail and NZ-based email services are worthwhile alternatives to Gmail, none of which retain information from your emails. And for advertising, you might want to explore Facebook/Instagram ads and active publicity instead of funnelling more money into the Google ad network.
You could do worse than to explore the possibilities. The downside is that anything new take some getting used to, but you'll get past that. While there's nothing wrong with monopolies in theory, in practice absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.
- written by Matt Bentley