[oelmekki]

I can see this being seen as a turning point in the future, if Google loses influence.

Until now, every time people were saying "I won't use a new google product, I don't trust them to keep it running", they were quickly blamed by googlers who replied this team had nothing to do with that team, and that you could not blame google forever for having close greader on you. And it was reasonable to think greader was an accident and we could not hold grudge on everything from google because of it (not that google did not close other products, but they were not as popular and difficult to replace).

But now, it's not an exception anymore, and it comes in a time when firefox is gathering new strength, when duckduckgo results are getting competitively good, when purism is working on a true linux phone... Google has been so strong this start of century not only because they had outstanding products, but also because they had a loyal and passionate hardcore users base. I can't see them not losing that, in the future (time will tell, obviously).