[shiroiuma]

>They’re the most user-hostile of the big tech companies and I want them to lose.

I disagree in two ways. I think Apple and MS are even more user-hostile (MS is putting ads in their OS...), but the reason I don't want Google to lose (first) is because then Apple would become even more powerful than they already are. I see Apple as more evil than Google, and also much more competent; Google is evil but pretty dumb frequently, which is a better kind of evil. A world without Google is a world where everyone is basically forced into being an Apple customer and iPhone user, like it or not. An Apple monopoly would be a terrible thing to live under, and I have zero faith that regulating bodies would handle this.

[gibbonsrcool]

Unfortunately Apple and MS seem like they’re going strong into 2024.

[shiroiuma]

Well the nice thing about MS, I'll say as a die-hard Linux user, is that these days, it's very very easy to not be a customer of MS or a user of their products to any great extent. If you don't want to use Windows, you really don't have to: it's very easy these days to just use Linux, and if you insist that you must use Windows because of some software, that's really on you at this point with so much stuff now on the web. No one is forcing you to play Madden MXLVI or whatever the latest Windows-only game is; it's purely a luxury.