Except it's actually not that easy. Most of the web uses google analytics, so its unavoidable when you visit a website. Most of the web's emails are routed through google; I remember reading a post about a guy who set up his own SMTP server and everything, but then realised that everyone he was contacting was using gmail anyway (can't find the post). Every time you see an add that's served by google, that means that there's a google embed in the page your looking at. Also, what alternative is there for YouTube? there isn't a realistic competitor. If you have an android phone (most of the world does) you're forced to use google play services. In today's world, they're unavoidable. That being said, making them a public utility is a bit forward...

"Most of the web uses google analytics, so its unavoidable when you visit a website."

I actually mentioned that. Just shim GA connections; this happens with most ad-blocking software, and I believe happens in Firefox's "strict" mode by default. It's really trivial.

"Most of the web's emails are routed through google; I remember reading a post about a guy who set up his own SMTP server and everything, but then realised that everyone he was contacting was using gmail anyway (can't find the post)."

Only true if the majority of people you converse with over email are boring.

"Every time you see an add that's served by google, that means that there's a google embed in the page your looking at."

Again, why would you ever look at an ad? That's a ludicrous idea.

"Also, what alternative is there for YouTube? there isn't a realistic competitor."

Bittorrent.

"If you have an android phone you're forced to use google play services."

Completely false. Android works fine without Google Play Services.

EDIT: Made words better.

I think it's more possible than others are suggesting, but I think there are exceptions.

There is no good competitor to YouTube - there are a lot of bad ones yes, but no good one. I'd argue this is objective fact.

I use fastmail and my own domain, but most people use gmail - I don't think that's that big of a deal though.

It's odd they'd target Google in the OP - telecom providers like Comcast and Spectrum are much worse in how they treat their customers and in those cases there really isn't another option most of the time.

RE: YouTube alternatives there's also PeerTube which also can use p2p delivery.

Can confirm that Android works great without Google Play Services, I don't have it. Most Play Store apps break but most of my apps are from F-Droid anyway.

PeerTube is not a serious alternative to YouTube. Almost all of the most popular content is missing and there are no reasonable alternatives. It claims to have over 400,000 videos on the site; YouTube gets 700,000 _hours_ of video uploaded each day.

Android without Google Play, unless you live in mainland China, does not "work great" the way most people want. I've done it and it was basically like not having a smartphone at all.

You cannot use banking apps, social media, games, streaming/Chromecast, maps (yes, I know OsmAnd exists; it has next to no information about businesses or landmarks and takes several minutes to plot a route that Google Maps or Waze calculates in less than 5 sedonds). Firefox is a reasonable alternative to Chrome and K-9 mail is good but that's about it. Unless MicroG suddenly became good in the past two years it's not a feasible solution even for people who are technically-minded.

> (yes, I know OsmAnd exists; it has next to no information about businesses or landmarks and takes several minutes to plot a route that Google Maps or Waze calculates in less than 5 sedonds)

OsmAnd, unlike Google Maps free tier, will always draw you an actually optimised route (though without considering traffic congestion).

> the majority of people you converse with over email are boring.

The majority of people are “boring.” Not acknowledging your approach’s failure points (in this petty way) isn’t good marketing, really.

>""Also, what alternative is there for YouTube? there isn't a realistic competitor."

Bittorrent."

I should avoid Google's monopoly by becoming a criminal?

Torrenting is not a crime. Piracy is a crime and a popular use of BitTorrent, but BitTorrent is also used for distributing non-criminal things like Linux ISOs and some app and game updates and art dumps (I have friends who release via torrent monthly) and datasets (for research and AI) and many other things.

Insinuating that using Bittorrent is inherently tied to criminal activity is like suggesting the same for a person who uses a car.

He was talking about videos, that is bittorrent as an alternative to youtube. So how do you discover legal videos that interest you on bittorrent?

The same way I discover new movies: See what everyone else is checking out.

Now try advertising your business while avoiding Google. Keep in mind that if you don't buy ads under your Company's Name from Google, Google will allow your competitors to buy those placements and make them the top results anyone searching your company on Google will see.

Advertisement is immoral and totally unnecessary to have a profitable business.

> advertisment is immoral

Interesting opinion... have any facts to back up such an opinion? What's immoral about... spreading information about you and your business?

There are immoral ways to go about advertising, without doubt. But advertising itself is immoral?

"What's immoral about... spreading information about you and your business?"

Non-consensually forcing anyone into anything is wrong. Advertising violates the NAP.

"But advertising itself is immoral?"

Indeed.

"non-consensually forcing anything into anyone" You have a perverveted view of "forcing" if you think sharing information is, as it sounds like you seem to be saying, the equivalent of rape.

If I say something you disagree with... I'm not violating a "Non-Aggression Principle" - unless you think that opinions make you weak (I believe diverse thought makes you stronger - can't get new ideas without communication).

And if you think communication REALLY is "aggression"... how do you pair the fact that you "forcing" your opinion on me about my opinion on advertising goes against your own principle? Isn't it kinda... a hypocritical blackhole of an opinion?

Sharing info isn't itself immoral... it's LITERALLY the bedrock of civilization, free will, free speech, self defense, etc - all start with communication. The right to say stuff others don't like or even GASP saying stuff that make them uncomfortable - like pointing out your paradoxical opinion. (HOW you share CAN be immoral... but not sharing/communication itself)

Advertising, at it's core, is sharing information. Without freedom to communicate? without the ability to share ideas? We'd be afraid of fire. we would be monkeys in caves...

"You have a perverveted view of "forcing" if you think sharing information is, as it sounds like you seem to be saying, the equivalent of rape."

Something doesn't have to be rape to be non-consensually forced upon someone; consider slavery, or compulsory schooling, or non-free Javascript. A well-documented method of torture is obscuring a captive's vision and looping a single song on repeat.

"how do you pair the fact that you "forcing" your opinion on me about my opinion on advertising goes against your own principle? Isn't it kinda... a hypocritical blackhole of an opinion?"

You asked for me to share the opinion, and as such, have given consent. Wider, though, this is a message board. The point is to share on-topic messages. This includes opinions, but does not include ads.

Advertising at its core is manipulation, not sharing information. Most advertisements grant the viewer net-negative information.

I'm curious to know which profitable companies never advertise.

Sourcehut, as a recent example.

Tesla, Huy Fong Foods (Sriracha), Costco, Krispy Kreme, Kiehl’s, Spanx, Rolls-Royce, and Zara are some examples.

I wouldn't add Tesla in there, its CEO is an audiovisual billboard by itself.

What do you do when you have a job interview that is scheduled as a Google Meet meeting? Or when a friend shares a Google Photos album of their newborn's pictures?

I guess you are a Google-avoider, so presumably you still have an actual Google account.

I think you can just talk to the person at the other end and ask for accomodation. I use Zoom for interviews, but if someone emailed me and was like "can we use Google Meet" I would be happy to change. Similarly, if someone texts me "I can't open that link to the photos you sent", I can just email them the photos.

It's not really a big deal, and I don't think that your unwillingness to talk with your friends or business partners makes Google a public utility in a regulatory sense.

>just talk to the person at the other end and ask for accomodation.

And for almost every job position. They will tell you Meet is what they use and if that doesn't work for you, they are happy to cancel the interview.

> I don't think that your unwillingness to talk with your friends or business partners makes Google a public utility in a regulatory sense

I mean, the tautological definition is that the regulators will decide whether Google is a public utility, or perhaps too big and needs to be broken up (a question separate from this particular lawsuit). All of us are just on the sidelines discussing it, and perhaps trying to influence our elected representatives.

The fact that courts and regulators are at least considering it does mean that there is some merit to the argument that it may not be practical to live Google-free these days. It's probably not just me being unwilling to talk to my friends and business partners.

If you need a google work account I guess choices need to be made. It is rare that hr wouldn't have another option available for the interview. But many employers use it.

Newborn's pictures could be obtained another way if you were a close relatives or friends. If you are not close enough then the desire to see them decreases anyways.

You always have the choice of creating a new google profile and disreguarding it later.

Many have

"What do you do when you have a job interview that is scheduled as a Google Meet meeting?"

Unlikely scenario; the companies that overlap with my set of skills either have their own offering or use a libre one. I will admit, this might be harder for other people (my skills hover around RTC heavily).

"Or when a friend shares a Google Photos album of their newborn's pictures?"

My friends range from "Too young to be using a 'boomer' service like Google Photos" to "Too old to be doing anything technical that isn't just texting photos via SMS," and most of them in the 25-30 child-having age either also avoid Google or would just show the pictures in person. I don't live in the Valley, though, so this could be a regional thing.

"I guess you are a Google-avoider, so presumably you still have an actual Google account."

No, I don't. It never seemed necessary to me.

Firefiox: I remember the first few versions since the rewrite. It was very fast. Fast forward to today and it's so slow.

What is the reason? Are the privacy changes affecting this by using more resources or pages are requesting domains that hang for too long?

It gives rust a bad name because this is one of the bigger rust products I know.

Hardly any of firefox is using rust. Servo was abandoned. I think the only rust part of FF right now is the CSS engine.

> I think the only rust part of FF right now is the CSS engine.

That's not correct.

Currently, 9.5% is Rust https://4e6.github.io/firefox-lang-stats/

Servo was abandoned after all of the fanfaire? Was a reason ever given? I thought we were in the servo era.

Mozilla cut a bunch of jobs and the servo team was one of the teams cut. The servo project is not officially canceled but there is no clear future for it.

I’m disappointed to hear Firefox is deteriorating daily.

I disagree about DDG’s search quality. I tried it for six months and that was not my experience. Eventually went back to Google.

I believe it depends on people. For some DuckDuckGo works perfectly, and they rarely go back to Google, if at all. For others it just does not work.

This reminds me of the dream of displacing Microsoft Word. Can we make a better product? No we can't. Only Microsoft can, through upgrades. The competition is stuck with making the same thing, and therefore not better, or something different, which is always "worse" because people are used to Word.

Also note that DuckDuckGo has a fundamental disadvantage: by not tailoring its searches to your history, it cannot possibly guess what you want to see as well as Google. Sure you're not trapped in your own search bubble, but you don't feel that. You only feel that the damn search engine can't find that website you are searching for for the fifth time already.

Pro tip: to get back to a web site, type its URL, or use bookmarks. Somehow I've seen many professional programmers fail to do that. I give them a URL, and they type it on the freaking search bar. (The more modern version is failing to type or auto-complete an actual URL in the omni bar.)

Yeah, it's certainly unfortunate. It gets just a little worse with every single update. The last one removed compact mode, which was the only thing making the UI somewhat bearable on-screen. It is now terribly large and unappealing.

What do you use a search engine for? Depending on your set of interests, turning off or on localization might have helped.

In the current build, there is an about:config setting to re-enable compact mode.

Yes, but they've expressed a desire to get rid of it in an upcoming update.

FWIW, I've used Firefox on a daily basis for years, and I have no complaints about desktop Firefox. (Firefox Android does leave some things to be desired, but also functions just fine as a web browser.)

I imagine you avoid Google because you don't want to get locked into their centralized closed source ecosystem and don't want them to track your entire online presence. So I'm surprised to see you say email should be avoided, as a completely open decentralized communication protocol.

Your stances on these two topics just seem to be in contrast with each other, would you care to elaborate?

I don't care about centralization or their tracking particularly much on their own. I don't like to use bad software. It bothers me, fundamentally. I naturally ended up far away from Google by virtue of not liking things that waste computational resources, which all of their software does, and has for years. This is the same reason I stopped using Windows and OS X. I like to use software that makes me feel good, and megabytes being wasted by tracking scripts and terrible Javascript frameworks does not make me feel good, so I avoid their standalone services and block their parasitic services.

However, email isn't really a good decentralized protocol. All federation fails at being meaningfully decentralized given enough time. There are great decentralized protocols; email is not one of them.

It’s insane how fast a barebones linux desktop system feels these days. Even an rPi 4 can be really snappy with the right desktop environment and window manager. It makes one realize how slow and inefficient all these modern web technologies have become in practice.

It’s been happening for decades, but while computers get orders of magnitude faster, software gets slower at a faster rate, consuming all of the gains and then some.

Edit: here’s an interesting example just looking at input latency: https://danluu.com/input-lag/ if you take the browser into account as part of the system as well, I’m sure it’s much, much worse.

Have you tried the new chromium based Edge?

Using a proprietary web browser would be like using a blowtorch that claimed to be powered by "magic." While I might use, say, a "magic" recipe, or a toy that claimed to be magic, I certainly wouldn't use a real, combustive tool that claimed to be magic.