[pythonistic]

I could argue that Mr. Lynn is crying "sour grapes" over this, but he also came very close to a point Bryan Lunduke made recently about Google[1]. Google has the power to stop people using their products from making a living, and a collapse or compromise of Google's infrastructure would cause untold economic harm to the nation and world. If Google as an "information provider" fails (search, email, telecommunications, DNS services, cloud services, etc.) a lot of other businesses stop or collapse.

A healthy economy is a lot like a healthy ecosystem: some parts are weaker, some will fail when stressed, but allowing the system to react naturally to inputs will likely result in a better outcome. But when you encourage a monoculture, single stresses can result in a complete collapse[2]. We're experimenting with establishing monocultures in our economies with potentially even more impact than those of the 19th and 20th centuries (like Standard Oil) that inspired the anti-monopoly regulation and legislation: if Samsung were to shut down tomorrow, what would be the impact on the Korean, regional and world economies?

An all-powerful Google that can't accept criticism or action to "trim it back" to preserve the overall economy represents a danger and Mr. Lynn was right to point this out.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwzJlvx4ndk [2] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/04/the-w...

[dade_]

I used most of Google's services. I thought they were great, but them I met a neighbour of mine that held such hatred toward them that I could only describe it as visceral. He told me a story of how he used Gmail, Docs, chat, Blogger, but as a director YouTube was the most important. One day his account was locked. Google decided he had used YouTube inappropriately and suspended his account. No recourse, no remedy, but more importantly his data and online identity were instantly gone. And then I thought about it, what if it happened to me? And that was the end of the Google for me, death to my Apple ecosystem, and hello DNS registrations and safety deposit boxes with the backups of my data. SaaS is a Chinese Finger trap though, so the further you are in....

[wolco]

Very important lesson in not connecting your google products

[CaptSpify]

Which doesn't work so well when Google keeps pushing consolidation down your throat. I never wanted my accounts merged, but they went ahead and did it anyway.

[AmIFirstToThink]

I know. Right?

It connected mine and my kid's school account together because same browser was used to login to those accounts.

I have come to the conclusion that Google is evil. It can't chose to not do evil anymore.

[noir_lord]

Funnily enough I mentioned Standard Oil in relation to Google and Facebook on here the other day, I'd read some terrible Clive Cussler novel that had Rockefeller as a character and that sent me of to read more about him.

[markdog12]

Then you gotta read this: https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/140...

[noir_lord]

Thank you for the recommendation.

[dfps]

This is a good point, but how would this cause Google's business branch (advertising) from collapsing? Businesses want to advertise, and their service here is reputable.

[ryandrake]

> If Google as an "information provider" fails (search, email, telecommunications, DNS services, cloud services, etc.) a lot of other businesses stop or collapse.

Seems a bit of an exaggeration. Let's pretend we got word from an all-powerful being that Google and all of its services were going to disappear from the face of the earth in exactly 30 days, giving everyone including users, competitors, partners, etc. plenty of time to prepare. 30 days from now, specifically, what collapses?

[tristram_shandy]

1. Every business that's running on GCE. They can't just "move off the service" in 30 days. This is a big one. Billions of dollars. Coca Cola obviously couldn't move in 30 days. Nor Airbus.

2. Every business that's running on GSuite. Let's assume this is mostly small business, and they will have limited ability to migrate to other SaaS or run in house replacements for these services.

3. Everyone who was using Youtube as a primary source of income, or whose business had a critical dependency on the Youtube platform for marketing

4. Every piece of code that depends on Google's DNS infrastructure, and anything that pulls DNS entries from 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4... how many devices like this do you think there are? How many were hard coded?

5. What happens to Android? It's a hypothetical, but potentially it could keep going, but let's assume major disruptions for everyone who runs a business that develops mobile applications for Android

6. How many people (and businesses) depend on Google Maps? How many are tied in directly to the API and won't be able to change this easily?

7. Now how many depend on Google Voice?

8. Gmail has more than 1 billion active monthly users.

I don't know if you're actually looking for a specific list of businesses, but that's not going to be possible for anyone to provide -- anyway, a shutdown of Google services would be an economic catastrophe... Most people couldn't even migrate a Gmail account in 30 days, and with Gmail alone we're already talking a billion+ people.

[ryandrake]

These all look like fixable problems, certainly not easily fixable, but also not on the level of "untold economic harm to the nation and world" and business collapse. My comment was that the parent was exaggerating, not that the loss wouldn't be temporarily painful to some companies.

[user5994461]

1. AWS and Azure

2. Outlook 365

3. Vimeo and Dailymotion

4. Every ISP provide DNS servers.

5. IOS

6. There are many alternative to google maps. Google didn't invented maps.

7. Noone?

8. There are many email service ready to take over.

There is nothing Google offers that can't be obtained from another provider.

And I'm not even getting into how Google has zero presence in Russia/China and its disappearance won't impact them.

[spinlock]

so .... if you can actually move a business from GCE to AWS in 30 days, will you please send me your resume? I'd like to hire you for a -- short -- contract :)

Seriously though, I think you're greatly underestimating how high the switching cost is to move from one cloud provider to another.

[TheAdamAndChe]

> Let's pretend.. that Google and all of its services were going to [shut down] in exactly 30 days

That wasn't the question the post above was asking. The question wasn't "given a chance to prepare, would the economy collapse," the question was "if Google were to suddenly collapse, would our economy survive?"

There exist several single points of failure in our global economy. Given the incredible importance Google has in our economy, with search, email, collaboration software, and cloud computing, it's not a stretch to say that Google is one of those points of failure.

It's also a location of power concentration. Google basically controls the internet as most see it. If your site is removed from Google, its chance of becoming popular is almost completely removed. If you are forced off of Google and you aren't prepared, you could lose years of important information. They also track nearly everyone, opening up the possibility of corporate population control and cultural shaping.

Do we really want single corporations this powerful?

[christophilus]

I have relatives who are in education, and I was fairly shocked to hear how Google has taken over that space. I don't think this is a good thing at all. Not sure what can be done about it, though. If they become as dominant here as they are elsewhere, they really could control the world's information from cradle to grave. takes tin foil hat off

[ryandrake]

The parent didn't specify a time frame, just that a failure of Google would result in "untold economic harm to the nation and world". Even if they went away tomorrow with no notice, sure there would be some pain and a lot of IT departments would be pulling in extra hours for some months, but come on...

[mcguire]

Why do expect Google to give you 30 days warning?