Good, I hate them too. 😊
On the other hand, this is how companies fall. In my area, many small businesses are foregoing Google entirely. SEO is expensive and complicated, and so are websites, map prominence, and most of the things Google sells. They’re not worth the investment.
Mostly, companies are shifting toward Meta products, so it’s not as though everything is hunky dory (want to know when that hip new boutique is open? Don’t bother with the web search, just look up their Instagram). There is a very real threat of collapse if Google keeps up the antics.
anti google article full of google cookies, perfect…
Google hates you
[sign in with your Google account]
Nothing wrong with catering to masochists.
Its like looking back at an abusive relationship and seeing that they only ever wanted you for the money, and to destroy your mind, and they wanted to climb based on your success. They are leeches.
Well, I hate Google too. I just can’t divorce because of email reasons
Starting a new email with Tutamail or Protonmail and slowly making new accounts with those emails is not difficult. Not sure about Tutamail, but Protonmail allows for easy migration from Gmail.
Proton has a smaller storage limit and I refuse to pay for any monthly subscriptions.
Then self host your own email. If you are not the customer, you are the product, and that applies to digital infrastructure. No credible VPS or domain registrar will let you have amazing service for free without hidden costs either.
Yes you almost certainly can. It’s less painful than you might imagine. I used Gmail since it was launched, and now that account is unused except for a couple of mailing lists I don’t care about. It just takes a bit of time, but you can do it bit by bit.
Most websites allow you to change your email address, get one from somewhere else and slowly start changing them over until there are no more you can move. If you get your own domain you can ensure you are never trapped in any particular email procoder ever again, though you will be playing about $50/year for a domain and email service. I have maybe a handful of things that still use Gmail.
I have my own domain and pay for a hosting service, don’t miss using big tech email services a bit.
Be careful where you place your email address, and even so you can create blacklists on the hosting service. Never had to yet, and in almost 10 years only 1 phishing email 2 weeks ago.
Would be a good chapter in Doctorow’s Enshittification.
Rest assured, the feeling is deeply mutual.
Fuck SEO. I’d rather focus on content optimization. Search should be powerful enough to find decent matches by now without having to play these games and pay for play BS.
DDG, Startpage, and Brave Search love me ❣️
