[echelon]

> Google offers an insane amount of value to people for free: YouTube, Android, Google Search, Trends, Scholar, Maps, Chrome, Translate, Gmail. These would all be paid subscription products without adsense (or some equivalent). And as paid products they would get the typical subscription enshittification over time.

That's false.

There are hundreds of free offerings in this and many other spaces offered by lots of other companies.

There does not have to be one monopoly controlling all of it for the freemium model and advertising to work.

[Aerroon]

What are the great phone OSes that aren't Android based? Can you run Android-specific apps on then?

There definitely isn't a YouTube replacement. You might say that there are video sites and that's true, but there aren't any that also offer 55% of the revenue to the creator, let alone that being enough to really have a creator economy.

Most browsers these days are Chromium based or are essentially funded by these big tech companies (eg Mozilla).

Google search and translate do have alternatives, especially these days with LLMs doing a lot of the latter.

What are some of the free email providers? I'm genuinely curious, because I know some exist, but I'm unfamiliar with most of them.

Are the free Maps alternatives good?

[echelon]

> What are the great phone OSes that aren't Android based? Can you run Android-specific apps on then?

Make Google give up Android (which is Linux based) and watch an entire industry pop up.

> There definitely isn't a YouTube replacement. You might say that there are video sites and that's true, but there aren't any that also offer 55% of the revenue to the creator, let alone that being enough to really have a creator economy.

TikTok creators earn 70-90%

Twitch creators make 50-70%.

Split YouTube into ten video websites and watch a robust, de-consolidated economy sprout.

> Most browsers these days are Chromium based or are essentially funded by these big tech companies (eg Mozilla).

This is the most heinous of all because it's the insidious linchpin behind Google's evil empire. It's the starting point of the funnel Google makes all of its "search" revenue from. (I say "search" because when I type in "openai", I know what I want, but Google gives me something different and forces that player into an expensive bidding war.)

Google didn't build the browser. That was originally KHTML and then taken over by Apple. They lifted it, used Embrace-Extend-Extinguish, and launched a tracking/search ad funnel/anti-adblock empire.

Every google search result compels you to download Chrome if you aren't using it. It's the default on Android. They warn you if you're using Firefox.

When you can spend billions to dump on the browser market you can do things like this. It's especially heinous since they reinvested their ill-gotten ad dragnet gains back into the engine that powered their empire.

Google needs to have Chrome stripped from them. Period. They cannot have a browser now or ever.

Firefox is their antitrust litigation sponge. They happily pay the stooges there to chug along and waste money.

Brave can and will easily fill this void when Google is forced out.

> What are some of the free email providers? I'm genuinely curious, because I know some exist, but I'm unfamiliar with most of them.

Microsoft, Yahoo. You used to be able to run your own before Google platformized email.

> Are the free Maps alternatives good?

Yes. Apple Maps is shockingly good. Turns out competition is good.

If Google is forced out, there will be lots of competition.

I don't expect consumers to understand this, but I do expect regulators to get it. And I want more regulators to take up the mantle against Google.

Google is highly anti-competitive and drastic measures need to be taken to restore a cutthroat capitalist environment that is maximally beneficial to the economy.

[Aerroon]

>Make Google give up Android (which is Linux based) and watch an entire industry pop up.

I guess that would be when Apple takes over smartphones entirely.

>TikTok creators earn 70-90%

>Twitch creators make 50-70%.

They don't get that revenue split from ads. They either match YouTube or give less depending on the size of the channel.

>Split YouTube into ten video websites and watch a robust, de-consolidated economy sprout.

We had 10+ video websites simultaneously before YouTube. The videos were all lower quality, limited in length, and obviously no revenue share. Only YouTube grew out of them to become YouTube and it was because of a superior product.

>This is the most heinous of all because it's the insidious linchpin behind Google's evil empire.

Google didn't make me switch to Chrome, Mozilla did. One day they decided to rework the UI, which broke my add-ons. And then they decided that I'm not allowed to use my own add-ons without permission from Mozilla.

Using my own add-ons with Chrome (or chromium-based browsers) was no problem.

Also, Mozilla mucked up the mobile browser thing themselves. Their scroll felt extremely wrong to use for years. Every other application on my phone scrolled in one way, but somehow Firefox did not. Eventually they fixed it, but that took a long time.

I'm not opposed to using Firefox, but they themselves pushed me away.

>Brave can and will easily fill this void when Google is forced out.

You think Google is going to continue building Chromium if they can't have Chrome?

???

>Microsoft, Yahoo. You used to be able to run your own before Google platformized email.

So one tech giant instead of the other? What's the difference?

>Yes. Apple Maps is shockingly good. Turns out competition is good.

Great if you're in the apple ecosystem, I guess, but that's, again, switching from one tech giant to another. In this case it would be switching into a company known for building walled-gardens. I don't see how this would improve the situation at all.

>I don't expect consumers to understand this, but I do expect regulators to get it. And I want more regulators to take up the mantle against Google.

Get what? That regulators should go after one tech giant so that their customers are forced to swap to the products of... other tech giants?

I'm not here to defend Google, but I feel like you might want to think about this some more. Your answers basically just suggested other tech giants or Brave (which relies on Google still contributing to chromium). Being stuck in Apple's walled garden doesn't sound great to me considering how expensive all their stuff is.