You're not a user in any meaningful way of every subcomponent of a product.

Maybe, but you're still indirectly supporting them.

How?

In any free/freemium product/service, your attention is your primary currency (your wallet and your participation in the network effect are secondary). Marketing to HN viewers happens when a funded company announces hiring.

How does that translate into support for google?

If you spend money or attention on a site that pays Google as a vendor, that is quite obviously indirect support of Google.

Perhaps we are just quibbling about which definition of the word "support"? In which case I agree that there is one definition of support in which you are right and another in which your parent is right.

That's about as much support for Google as if I bought a product from a storefront that's in a building owned by a landlord who supports a cause I don't agree with. First of all, I (as a consumer) would have no idea who owned that building, and secondly the link between my purchase and money flowing to that unsavory cause is so far removed that it's not even worth considering.

Go far enough down any business transaction and you'll find a cause you disagree with. If the tree you planted makes oxygen for your worst enemy, will you cut down the tree to spite them?

> as if I bought a product from a storefront that's in a building owned by a landlord who supports a cause I don't agree with.

There are plenty of people who would look at this situation, and do whatever they can to make sure they don't enable that person.

My understanding is that Firebase is free. However, even if it wasn't I still think the link is tenuous to the point of meaningless. Spending attention on HN does not make google any richer, it stretches the definition of the word "support" in a way that misses the point within the context of boycotting a company. If every HN reader quit the site today only a Firebase SRE would take notice, if every HN reader quit using Gmail it'd cost google a considerable amount of money.