I'm fully in agreement with most here that the modern Google is a danger to the internet, but it's pleasant to be reminded that this wasn't always the case. It's a bittersweet anniversary, so let's take the sweet with the bitter.
To paraphrase what the DOJ just said in their opening statement, the Google you're talking about is long gone.
That means they’ve been evil or rushing as fast as they can toward evil since… 2008.
Google died at about 10 years old.
What is the good of owning the leading ad and tracking network if you don't use it?
And besides think of all the good things one can do for the world with so much money... Only, like Mozilla they sold out the one thing they could do that no one else could (providing a free, independent browser in Mozillas case, having access to everyones thoughts without abusing it in Googles case).
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. There's never been a case of a player with Google's degree of market leverage that hasn't become corrupted (or any government in a similar position, for that matter). It's not about handing out money. It's about having democratic checks in place to behead and dismember entities that do what Google has done. The vestiges of the US Govt and EU parliament are probably the last thing standing between info sector monstrosities and the end of free thought and speech in the world.
As much as I wish it, Google search is only the secondary focus. They multi-billion deal with Apple shows the massive cash stack developed from search, which would lead one to believe Google lives from search. I would have no problem with this co-dependant relationship, except it show the darker side of Google. Anything for installs. If Google was suddenly forced to be ONLY a search engine, I maintain they would fail - No gmail apps. No slides. No voice. A "nothing but search" Google would make unimaginable amounts of money, but it would only be clicks. Quick impressions, that don't generate the revenue Google stockholders now depends on.
The clicks themselves should be enough. My mind explodes at the concept of counting Google's click-thru revenue; thank god for 64-bit CPUs! As the world's finest data-mining corporation which {likely, obviously, as proven in court} funnels untold data to `todaysTLA {}` they have show time and time again, they care not for their free-tier customers, employees or paying "customers". The amount you pay pales in comparison to how much the revenue stream is from `{data mining data points for gmail, android etc}, of course they are going to monetize you. The massive income increase and the thankful government's soft-hand approach is the underlying motivator. The amazing ability of Google's lawyers to keep the vast majority of the current anti-trust trial relatively hidden screams of influence.
This being said, who do we turn to? Who's the stalwart, effective and visible protector of the internet now? Obviously not firefox, gnu, debian or mullvad. Where is their a major-league player that can take us back to the internet of old, the internet of a useful GeoCities page? I use Firefox on every device I own. I'd cross-compile before I go to Chrome, but they don't just own client-side-internet, do they?
The internet before capitalism was a wonderful thing, but we had a problem - someone eventually pays. Someone eventually pays for everything - email, www, gopher, newsgroups, ftp. Even today, at some point, you realize "the cloud" is just someone else's machine, which they pay for. Universities fronted the bill for years, but quickly bowed out.
Maybe one day we will reach a point that a `cloud_server {4-core arm cpu, 4GB ram, 40GB disk};` is so cheap as to be offered for free. Until that day, the internet is for those who pay in either money or information. I do not agree with the way TLAs work the system. I think the google tradeoff is bad. I understand that my ability to browse www.mario64speedruns.com depends greatly on if I trigger a captcha through Cloud{Flare,Front}, based mostly on my ad-blocking.
And even once we reach the promised land of free 4/4/40, it will only survive because of actual, paying, CC-on-file customers. The sooner we come to "horrible acceptance", where we realize the free-love-1972 isn't the world we live in, the better. It will quicken the people a thousand times smarter than me figuring out a way to keep 1% of the web free.
None sucks; better than none sucks less; therefore 1% is amazing,
I have some 30 Google accounts, each for one service I used either once or sometimes for a couple of years. Although most of them are unusable now because I cannot proceed beyond the login without supplying a phone number. Well, they have recently sent out mails that they will delete them soon if they remain unused.
I did use Google search from when nobody knew it in the 1990s until 3-4 years ago when I switched to Duckduckgo.
20 years ago I would have applied to Google if they had only had a tech job in my country.
I have only one Android account. I keep that phone constantly in flight mode, except when I absolutely need to use a single app for work.
Today I am convinced that Google is a harmful company that the US government should split as they did with AT&T. And as a European we should not send any data to the US because of what Snowden have taught us and the US government does not grant data of foreigners any protection.
Advertising is 95% an unethical business. Overconsumption is a fact for large parts of the planet. Trying to sell more is wrong, we need to live with less. Myself by my own choices I took a 30% salary cut twice in my career. And I am still on the overconsumption side, even if the phone I type this on is 9 years old and my main phone more than 5.
Thank you Google, you've made a dent in the universe!