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A comment on Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?. Parent comment

Re:Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big? by pmoriarty on Saturday June 10, 2017 @04:38PM (#14529099)
"This is assuming Google hasn't starved out potential competitors who would have provided the same service, or better service, had the playing field been more level."

There are alternatives to many of these already.

Firefox (and other browsers) for Chrome, Openstreetmap for maps. Vimeo for youtube. Flickr for photos. Dropbox for drive. Never heard of waze, so don't know what's an alternative for that, but I would be surprised if there wasn't one.

I'm also of a rare breed who thinks Android is total an utter garbage compared to Palm OS, and much prefer the latter. I wish Google and Apple had never gotten in to the phone business. It's been an utter nightmare of spyware and bloatware ever since.

I personally would not miss any of these products execept for youtube, and that only because of the content which is provided by users, not by Google. That content could be moved to another platform, and I'm sure if Google disappeared entirely and permanently tomorrow, just as good or better a storehouse of video content would be rebuilt to replace it.

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Re:Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big? by zanny on Saturday June 10, 2017 @04:56PM (#14529160)
Waze is basically Google maps with a Skinner Box on top to make you contribute data to it for points and gold stars.

Since Google bought them, they canibalized the crowdsourced data for Maps anyway, and have never updated the Waze UI so it looks like a Fisher Price toy today. There is really no reason to use it over Google Maps.

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Re:Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big? by johnchristopher on Saturday June 10, 2017 @05:51PM (#14529384)
I don't know about Google maps in the US but in Europe it doesn't warn of dangers on the road (cars on the side of the road, blocked roads, etc.). Waze do.
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Re:Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big? by enraged_camel on Saturday June 10, 2017 @07:33PM (#14529815)
It warns about police checkpoints as well.
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Re:Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big? by seanp2k2 on Saturday June 10, 2017 @07:53PM (#14529873)
It also has better community mapping as of a few years ago. Everyone in Costa Rica uses it because some of the roads just aren't on GMaps. Also works better with e.g. Road closures due to trees falling in the jungle (and because everyone uses it).
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