"Google has been very bad": Trump warns Google may be "shut down" in rant
www.salon.com
Trump may have won over much of Silicon Valley, but he continued to attack Google in an incoherent rant on Fox

sicko-yes

  • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]English
    49•1 month ago

    no please don’t shut down the largest advertising platform on earth.

    where else will I learn about One Neat Trick to Bring Down My Car Insurance in 2025 and who this mysterious man that is such a genius that Doctors Hate Him?

  • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]English
    39•1 month ago

    Now realistically I know that a shutdown of Google would probably take place over a span of months to over a year and would largely involve some or all Google services getting sold off and possibly rebranded, and the shutdown would see plenty of communication with end users about how the shutdown impacts them. But I find it infinitely more amusing to imagine a timeline where every single Google service is shut down all at once without any warning whatsoever. Millions of people are locked out of their accounts on different websites, and countless websites break. The Play Store and Chrome Web Store stop working and lots of software stops updating. Everyone who relied on Google Maps or YouTube or Google Docs or really any Google service whatsoever for any reason is just completely screwed over. Tech stores stop stocking Chromebooks and Android phones, and instead sell them for scrap.

    Then within the span of a year, innumerable websites have shut down, and innumerable businesses have gone bankrupt, dominoes knocking over dominoes such that even more websites and businesses shut down, and then even more and even more, and all in all the shutdown of Google ends up being the one thing that causes mankind to collectively stop using the Internet so much.

    We made it, Mr. Calhoun. We made it.

    congratulations

    • huf [he/him]English
      20•1 month ago

      china is already decoupled from google, isnt it? they’d be fine.

      but yeah, all google services just suddenly returning “patriots are in control. do not adjust your set” would be amazing. worth a movie or three, certainly.

  • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]English
    11•1 month ago

    While I wouldn’t say this is top on the lists of reasons to disentangle myself from Google’s delightful little panopticon, it is a reminder. Anyone have a good guide on getting off gmail etc etc etc etc etc?

    • HotAtForty [he/him]English
      9•1 month ago

      Proton is a decent option if your objective is to simply not use google and are happy to pay a subscription to a Swiss firm that is at least incentivized to profit from subscriptions instead of data mining.

      Self-hosting is really the gold standard here but you’d need to be a tech whizz to get there.

    • citrussy_capybara [ze/hir]English
      4•1 month ago

      disroot.org has a bunch of services with no ads, tracking

      Disroot aims to change the way people are used to interact on the web. We want to encourage and show them not only that there are open and ethical alternatives but also that it is the only possible way to break free from the walled gardens proposed and promoted by proprietary software and corporations, either through our platform, others that have similar values and goals or even their own projects.

      • email
      • cloud storage
      • search
      • document collaboration
      • chat/video
      • git
      • pastebin
      • more

      https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.disroot.disrootapp/

      there are probably better individual services but if you want some google alternatives this gives a bunch to play with and a low single-account entry bar