[Manuel_D]

Yes, you have to use the municipal electricity. You cannot lay your own power lines, it's illegal. And in most urban areas, you can't run your own generator for emissions restrictions. You also can't power your home with a bicycle. Even champion bicyclists output 50-100 watts.

Using Bing, DuckDuckGo, or other Google alternatives are incomparably easier than not using utilities like electricity and plumbing. I struggle to see how one can honestly make this comparison.

[smaudet]

Such a tiny, piddling outlook on the world.

You can do everything with water with rain-barrels and buckets. As others have said, you can do power with candles, bike generators, and wood fire.

Is that a realistic solution in a modern society? Hell no.

I struggle to see how anyone honestly can lie to themselves that it is somehow absurd to label something a "utility" just because the technology has advanced beyond cave-man level.

Google deserves their status as a utility - monopolies, effective or otherwise, we have consistently found to be actively harmful.

Furthermore, if a company wants to be a "be-all-everything technological solution", it is actively attempting to usurp the role of government. And when that govt is un-elected, that's a despotic oligarchy, at best. We may well be forced to storm Google HQ and put every Google CEO's head on the chopping block if we want to preserve our liberty.

Or, y'know, maybe just support getting them regulated instead, bit more of a humane solution, dontcha think?

[josefx]

You could just create battery trailer to power your house and drive to the next Tesla charging station with it whenever it runs low. No need for power lines or any power generation in your backyard. Maybe someone should propose that trailer idea to Elon? Tesla already produces everything necessary to take yourself of the grid, it only needs to be bundled up right.

[nybble41]

No need for a trailer, since a typical EV already has more capacity than most home battery solutions. Example: A 2021 Tesla Model 3 Long Range AWD stores 82 kWh[0], while a PowerWall 2 only stores 13.5 kWh[1]. So a single Model 3 is the equivalent of up to 6 PowerWalls. All it's missing is official support for vehicle-to-grid connections.

[0] https://electrek.co/2020/11/10/tesla-model-3-82-kwh-battery-...

[1] https://www.smartsolarenergyco.com/tesla-powerwall-review/

[andyana]

You might want to rethink your bike claim; it is certainly possible.

[ben_w]

Only as a technicality. Domestic electrical power use varies worldwide from “none” to “tens of kilowatts”. This, for example, is what it takes to run a UK household on bicycle electricity: https://youtu.be/C93cL_zDVIM

[andyana]

No, not even as a technicality. It is possible, full stop.