Are you also happy having to pay for services like Google Maps, which everyone else can get for free - because some French Maps company thinks it's unfair they can't make as much money as Google can?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/feb/03/google-fi...

If so, enjoy getting nickled and dimed for literally everything in the future.

1. That ruling actually makes sense. If we don't prevent price wars smaller companies don't have any possibility of competing with larger companies and consumers lose in the end due to lack of competition.

>> "If so, enjoy getting nickled and dimed for literally everything in the future."

2. Since when did having to pay for something you use become 'getting nickled and dimed'??

Edit:

3. Look at it this way. Were you fine with Microsoft giving IE away with Windows? Other browser developers couldn't compete because Microsoft used its dominance in OS and the fact it didn't need to charge for a browser to put other browser developers out of business and we as consumers suffered. This is the same thing. Google is the dominant search engine. When I search for an address they should me a map on the right of the screen. They promote their maps with a link at the top of the search. And their product is free. Seems pretty similar the MS in the 90's to me.

OpenStreetMap is at parity with Google Maps.

EDIT: Don't make it sound like we should allow for-profit companies to hold us hostage.

>> not allowing a huge multi-national business to abuse its power.

And yet you use iCloud and Amazon?

Could you make your point more clearly? Google is potentially breaking laws and being investigated for that. If Amazon or Apple are suspected of breaking those laws they should also be investigated.

Do you think that abuses of power which result in the violation of laws are the only kinds of abuses of power that matter?

Of course not. I didn't imply that anywhere. I stated that Google is potentially breaking the law so should be investigated and offered some alternatives I use which suit my needs better.

Maybe the initial point you meant to make was related more to 'breaking the law' rather than 'abusing their power', but the phrasing you used focused on the abuse of power rather than the law. This can be taken to imply that you care about the abuse of power itself (rather than merely possible violations of law)

Apple and Amazon (like most companies their size) have well established histories of abusing their power, so I found it odd that you would explicitly mention their products as alternatives in the very same sentence in which you appear to criticise the abuse of power.

I meant 'abusing their power' in the sense of a monopoly using their power to kill competition before it has a chance.

Wait you don't use google for searching?!?!?! Or gmail? I am in awe.

I'm always amazed by people with your perspective! I hated Gmail from the beginning, it works terribly with IMAP, and it's generally slow compared to a good native app.

Google search is still occasionally better than DDG, but it's never more than an !g away if I'm unhappy with DDG.

What are all these services Google provides people feel are irreplaceable? I don't get it. They're an advertising company with big bags of money to let smart people noodle around on their pet projects. Nice company to work for (if you aren't morally opposed to advertising), but I've never found the products appealing.

As far as gmail goes, I don't know if it is now widespread, but one day my gmail suddenly had different tabs for primary, social media, promotions, updates, and forums, and it changed my life. I hate using other mail apps that don't do that. Can't ever find anything.

I think they introduced that 3 or 4 years ago. There are multiple inbox views you can select from in the settings menus. I do like that system but it's not very valuable to me. I get quite a lot of email but I tend to deal with it all as soon as it arrives.

I understand, but before that was implemented I was really bad about answering emails because so many of them were garbage. Now I only have to look at the garbage if I want to (because I am addicted to massdrop)

Have you tried Inbox?

I'll be honest. Google Search is better for certain things. For example it's nice getting those little boxes at the top of the page that answer your question without you even needing to follow a link but I can afford the extra few seconds it takes to click a link every now and then in exchange for better privacy and results that aren't manipulated based on data the search engine holds on me.

As for Gmail that was a recent switch. I'm currently forwarding all mail to my iCloud account and using that. As I rarely use the Gmail web app (I only use desktop/mobile apps to access mail) the switch has been seamless.

For me the final straw was looking at my 'activity' page on Google. Despite having turned it off web history was on. I presume they asked me to click something someday and I wasn't careful enough but that was very annoying. They've also changed the web history interface to make it pretty complicated to figure out how to delete everything. I then noticed they had location tracking on (which I also specifically disabled in the past). I couldn't find a way to delete all of that and had to delete each record individually.

Google wants to do some cool stuff with all this data but it certainly isn't doing anything that makes it worth it for me to give up my privacy.

GMail is super easy to replace. I use FastMail and love it.

Google search is a bit harder. I use DDG by default but will still use Google sometimes.

Have you given startpage a try?

startpage gets their data from google.

Yeah but as a proxy.

Google is still the best search engine, but in my opinion gmail isn't that big of a deal anymore. They were revolutionary in their time and are still very good, but there are great alternatives by now.

The road to hell is paved with great web search results.

What could gmail possibly give me that a server with postfix, dovecot and roundcube can not?

I'm honestly not sure if you're being sarcastic :(

I'm serious. I have a gmail account for spam signups, and i log in sometimes, but I didn't find anything that it gives me over my setup.

The only thing I can think of is the initial setup I had to do to get everything done, but that's a few hours of work and it's here now. Using it for years without having to do anything. Some friends of mine use it, and my family, and nobody complains. Ever.