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You can blame Google for a lot - however I believe if it wasn't about Google someone else would dictate the game.

In the past it was Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, XFire, .. I mean those companys were so big (e. g. XFire for gaming streaming) but they failed to stay ahead of time - lets see whats up with Google or Facebook or Amazon in 15 years.




You can blame Google for a lot - however I believe if it wasn't about Google someone else would dictate the game.

Are you proposing that we don't do anything about a specific problem because there may be other theoretical problems?

That's like saying, "If this guy in this dark alley doesn't kill me now, a heart attack might eventually kill me, instead; so I'll just stand here and make it easy for his knife to find me."


I'm wondering what the actual solutions are - we've got plenty of alternatives but we tend to not use them as its comfortable to use Google solutions.

They put plenty of effort into their software and at that scale it is amazing how fast it returns results.

For my websites I achieve better ranking placements in Bing then I do in Google - we should probably all start using Bing from now on?


It’s also not 100% Google fault. Chrome was needed to move the web forward when it was launched. And are they now suppose to make a less good browser to help competitors emerge?

I’m not happy with the current situation and would hate to see Mozilla fail, but I can’t fault Google for the current situation.


That's like saying it's OK for someone to invade Poland because they got the trains to run on time.


What... No that is not same. Mozilla failing isn’t Googles fault, the opposite in fact, the’ve kept Mozilla alive for years.

Google misusing their position to dictate web standards, that’s Googles fault. But Google-centric standards didn’t cause Mozillas current problems. Poor management did.


Yeah success can lead to all these. Especially when shareholders demand it or someone in marketing gets the idea. In general programmers don't get that much evil ideas.


So what, we just sit around passively and wait for something to happen to Google and friends?

Doesn’t that strike you as a poor move?

I don’t see why we should be relegated to put up with another x-number of years of these companies behaving (arguably) badly, just so things can change and they can be replaced with another company that will do the same thing.


What do you think could be actively done to "stop Google"?

Dont use AMP? Well you will lose money / power.

Dont use search? Maybe miss out opportunities. How can I as marketeer convince my clients as Google traffic is 90% source of income?

I get your point but I'm not sure what could be done without harming economy (aka people).


Breaking them up would be a good start.

Obviously those tools are important, not debating that, the problem is that they’re all the product of a single hegemony with an agenda, partitioning it so that it can no longer push the likes of AMP to the detriment of everyone else.


> however I believe if it wasn't about Google someone else would dictate the game.

Always worth reading:

https://stratechery.com/concept/aggregation-theory/




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