There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

Does everyone hate Google now? | Google's story over the last two decades has been a tale as old as time: enshittification for growth

Google’s story over the last two decades has been a tale as old as time: enshittification for growth. The once-beloved startup—with its unofficial “Don’t Be Evil” motto—has instead become a major Internet monopolist, as a federal judge ruled on Monday, dominating the market for online search. Google is also well-known for its data-harvesting practices, for constantly killing off products, and for facilitating the rise of brain-cell-destroying YouTubers who make me Fear for Today’s Youth. (Maybe that last one is just me?)

Google’s rapid rise from “scrappy search engine with doodles” to “dystopic mega-corporation” has been remarkable in many ways, especially when you consider just how much goodwill the company squandered so quickly. Along the way, though, Google has achieved one unexpected result: In a divided America, it offers just about everyone something to hate.

Here are just a few of the players hating Google today.

Etterra ,

Corporations: Hmm, we seem to have saturated our market. How do we make line keep go up?

  1. Diversify our products to cater to new or niche markets.
  2. Accept the status quo and focus on making our existing customers happy while integrating feedback to improve and entice people to ditch our competitors?
  3. Make everything worse because what are they gonna do, use Bing? LOL
  4. Congratulate ourselves on winning capitalism, then selling our stocks to the employees so we can go enjoy our wealth and return forever.
  5. HAHAHAHA yeah right. Time to squeeze this shit for every red cent then cash out before the stock price crashes and move in to the next victim.
Jepethiel ,

You got that right bro. Greed breeds abuse of the customer. Mega-companies, become the worst problem the world has because of that same greed. To put it bluntly “Greed is not good” to mis-quote a 'Wall Street" movie character player by Charlie Sheen.

paddirn ,

<cough> Michael <cough> Douglas <cough>

LarmyOfLone ,

Nationalize google and turn it into a coop that is democratically controlled by worker and users. Lets us vote on their management and corporate priorities and policies.

To hell with the shareholders! They ruin everything!

skvlp ,

At least their crawlers should be nationalised/coop/something.

BedSharkPal ,

I wish there were more coops. Shareholders are almost the entire reason for the mess we find ourselves in.

Freefall ,

They took down the Don’t Be Evil sign.

mojofrododojo ,

Don’t Be Evil

faster just to x through the problematic bits.

Freefall ,

That is more Elon’s thing 🤣

mojofrododojo ,

dude that’s funny but elon never started with don’t be evil, he just went full hog on the evil from the start.

blizzardpiano ,

Reminds me of a cannibal in the Deltora series who has the sign “LIVE NO EVIL” on the wall, when it’s actually “LIVE ON EVIL” but mirrored.

Dorkyd68 ,

I’m all about that duck duck go yo

mrmanager ,
@mrmanager@lemmy.today avatar

I don’t use Google anymore except for Google maps in my car. :) I guess they can spy on where I’m driving. But no search history.

rekorse ,

Magic earth is a great alternative.

StormWalker ,

I came across “Organic Maps” and it’s really impressive. I now use them 50/50. The only real difference for me is that Google maps shows the traffic jams. So if it’s a long journey I use Google, but if I’m not in a rush and just need directions I use Organic.

gwen ,

openstreetmaps

Manalith ,

I’m not sure if it would work with how they do user updates, but I’m waiting for someone to make a version of Waze that runs on openstreetmaps. I.E. temporary updates like ‘car stopped here’ ‘cop parked there’ ‘lane closed ahead’

It seems like the functionality is already there for it, but they’d have to distinguish them from the long term updates like ’ this is a business at this address with these hours’ that presumably won’t change by the next day.

DrowningInteger ,

I’ve started to try and move away from Google as much as possible, which I knew would be difficult, but it’s proving to be harder than I thought.

I can’t do anything about my work stuff, because our company uses Google for email and cloud storage. I set up an account on Proton Mail for my personal email and file storage. I currently have an android phone, but I don’t like iPhones so I don’t really know what I want to do there. I switched back to Firefox after 15 years of using Chrome. I actually started using Bing search more. I’m looking into alternatives for the Chromecast that Google doesn’t seem interested in supporting anyway, which might just end up being a small PC hooked up to the TV.

I’m just so tired of Google services either being shut down or slowly getting worse and worse until they’re nearly unusable.

wispy_jsp ,

On the android front, if you don’t mind using a pixel phone then Graphene OS would be worth checking out. It’s a foss non rooted alternative to base android with a focus on privacy and security. The no root requirement means a good amount of apps like banking work properly on it. It vastly expands the app permission system and removes the special privileges to Google system apps, allowing you to remove it or limit them. It also supports sandboxing of the play store and multiple profiles so you can effectively quarantine Google requiring apps.

StormWalker ,

+1 for GrapheneOS on a Pixel. I use GrapheneOS on a Pixel 7 Pro. It’s just awesome. I will never go back. Camera is awesome too.

nemys ,
@nemys@niwego.com avatar

@StormWalker @wispy_jsp
I have been using GrapheneOs for many years, now I am using Google Pixel 8, I had to install Google Camera App to make the best use of the camera

StormWalker ,

Yeah I’m with you there, the pixel camera app is a must for me too. What I love about GrapheneOS is how easy it is to block permissions. So with google pixel camera app, no network and no location permissions means that it cannot report back to google unless I allow it to. It’s a safe way to use the odd google app in a limited way when you need to. The other google app I use is the g-keyboard, because it is so much better in some ways. But again it is very restricted and I turned off the features I don’t want, like voice typing.

StormWalker ,

“Brave search” seems to work good for me with Firefox. Protonmail is awesome yeah 👍🏻 There are alternatives to everything, just finding the good ones!

save_the_humans ,

degooglisons-internet.org/en/

Thought this looked cool. Haven’t had the need to use it much since discovering this. Offers a lot of googles functionality that I used to use like collaborative documents, spreadsheets, calendars, and more.

sysop ,

It’s not as hard as you’d think. github.com/tycrek/degoogle - This has everything you need. Definitely use Firefox. Check out Nextcloud for personal cloud/documents replacement etc. Definitely try a small PC hooked to your TV and look in to plex. Don’t use Google/Bing, stick with DuckDuckGo and if you need to, use !g or !b in your searched on ddg to get bing and google results. It’s fun exploring all the alternatives in the list.

hightrix ,

Yes. I hate advertising companies.

IndustryStandard ,

All my homies hate Google

dumpsterlid , (edited )

Notice how Google Maps data hasn’t been improving, and if anything getting worse?

I worked for Cognizant, a contractor for Google maps at the Bothell office. I worked for a contractor that Google would fire every 5 years, contract it to another company and change the sign on the office building they owned…then rehire everyone. One of the benefits of this for them (one of the key benefits) was it made it much harder for workers to organize especially because Cognizant and Google can just play “go talk to the other parent I cant do anything” when workers ask for help because they were suffering/needed higher pay to survive/needed basic accomodations.

I worked for Google but Google didn’t want to pay me or my coworkers a living wage, so Google paid some lawyers to make it so they could pretend we didn’t work for Google.

Google is a trash company with absolutely zero idea how to move forward into the future, the company was absolutely chock full of intelligent interesting smart people but Google was so shortsighted that they forced my whole department back to the office for no good reason (literally everything was remote work too).

My experience after working for Google was that Google was most definitely going to collapse within the decade in terms of market power, at the very least in the realm of maps/spatial data.

What a shameful, pathetic company and the management should be ashamed of how stupid and out of touch they were.

Also, completely and utterly anti-worker.

(Cognizant is trash too but if you have ever heard of the company Cognizant you already know that).

A particular point of shame I want to level at the management above me at Cognizant and Google, most of our work was involved with prototyping google maps data editing and QC workflows… that could then be exported to India or somewhere else with cheap labor… except upper management was racist as fuck against Indian workers and would complain about their shoddy work indirectly all the time…

…and never bring up that they specifically wanted to hire Indians so they could pay them shit and treat them like shit. If you were a tech worker in India would you work as hard as I did for far far far far less pay and WAY worse treatment?

I actually led a training class on a workflow that was absolutely not suited for new workers to Google Maps gis data editing to… totally new entry level hires in India, and the Indians were frequently cheating or totally checking out… again because why the hell would they take this shit seriously? To be clear most people were like most people, they just did the best job they could, but there were lots of people I was training that could see right through the bullshit of the entire system and I can ZERO percent blame them for not disrespecting themselves by treating Google like it was genuine in its offers of employment, stability and a career.

Management encouraged a culture where lowkey shitting on Indians for being lazy and dumb was basically accepted because it rationalized the cruelty, inefficiency and stupidity of the entire system.

I hate Google.

namingthingsiseasy ,

You could also blame the idiots who had a chance to unionize but never did.

If you go back 5-10 years, everyone would say, “why do we need to unionize? Working in IT is great, we don’t need to unionize!” And now see where we are today to realize how stupid of a mindset that was. I guess they don’t buy insurance for the same reason.

I thought you had to be smart to work at Google, but seeing people take dumb positions like that made me realize that while they might have been brilliant engineers, they were definitely not very smart people.

(I’m not holding Google blameless here by the way - fuck them hard! But Google employees had the chance and wasted it, and this is what they left behind.)

dumpsterlid ,

The cognizant google employees I worked with were actually VERY in support of unionizing, even more so than google employees themselves, it was a really interesting mix of people and they didn’t have their heads up their asses like normal techbro google employees who are used to everything working out and handwaving away systematic concerns.

Multiple attempts over the years had been made to unionize, but Google always crushed them with an iron fist.

namingthingsiseasy ,

I don’t doubt you at all - I’ve seen quite a few stories of Google exhibiting retribution against employees attempting to unionize.

The point I was trying to make (admittedly quite badly) is that Google employees should have unionized a long time ago, when they had the upper hand. At this point, it’s a much steeper uphill climb. But it is still a very worthy fight.

FiskFisk33 ,

On the search side, i’m really impressed with kagi. They are a paid service, but you can try them out for free no strings attached.

SendMePhotos ,

dOn’T bE eViL

brucethemoose ,

How about “monopolizing the ad industry, going all in on manipulative engagement farming, and making billions off of destroying the internet they helped create, and possibly democracy”

I think the headline proves most people don’t really understand how deeply Google has embedded themselves in, and farmed, well, everyone.

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

Google hasn’t just monopolised the ad industry, but is holding the internet itself in its clutches.

They own and control one of the biggest operating systems on the market, giving them control over peoples devices. They own and control the biggest browser engine on the market, giving them control over the internet standards; they can implement whatever the heck they want and essentially force it as a web standard. They own and control the biggest search engine on the market, giving them control over what information people can see and access.

For a lot of people, Google controls practically the entire internet access chain, and that should terrify anyone who cares about a free and open internet.

brucethemoose ,

that should terrify anyone who cares about a free and open internet.

We’re way past that… right? They’ve already kinda destroyed the open web and are squeezing it for money.

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

Oh, but it can still get worse!

KingThrillgore ,
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

For the 113th time: YES

Google stopped being cool ages ago and Chrome marked the moment they turned evil. They no longer had an incentive to just throw money at problems, they wanted to completely drive the web ecosystem and they did. They had a browser.

TheObviousSolution ,
@TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee avatar

All companies enshittify themselves eventually, and the fact that those that were trying to fight it within the company were still getting shit on from within and from outside the company only hastened its fall by just removing them as a deciding factor through sheer pressure. Google really isn’t as dystopian as people put it as - for one, it’s too incompetent at starting and sticking to new ventures.

As it continues falling and eventually the traditional competitors overtake it, I think it will become apparent what a truly dystopian megacorporation actually is before Google completely becomes anything remotely close to it - Microsoft would have reached that line if they had successfully been able to sneak in Recall. DuckDuckGo fell when Bing did, smoke and mirrors… Google is pretty bad right now, just not what I would call a dystopic megacorp.

jj4211 ,

All companies enshittify themselves eventually,

This isn’t a foregone conclusion, just a number of things that are increasingly likely:

  • When a place becomes “cool” and “rich”, then they get job applicants that are all in on “get rich quick” and as they get to call shots they are ready to destroy the core value to pulp out some profit. Particularly older companies like Intel, IBM and Microsoft have had time for that mindset to promote into the positions.
  • Failing that, investors can rapidly corrupt existing leadership, particularly for “startups”. It might start sincere, but then when a relatively small bunch find themselves with a multi-billion dollar payday, pedal to the floor to ruin things.
  • Additionally, any major player not in a position to be a part of the fun will make their knock-offs and market or monopoly their way to displace. Oh look, Microsoft Teams…

There’s a moderately successful, but also reasonably modest company that went about 50 years without getting “enshitified”. The founder was passionate about it, kept the company private, and held in until his 80s when he finally decided he really couldn’t do it anymore. Then they went public and immediately the layoffs, price hikes, and cloudification commenced, as the flood gate of enshitification opened on his retirement.

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

This isn’t a foregone conclusion, just a number of things that are increasingly likely:

The system incentivises it, though. I don’t like dealing in absolutes, so I am inclined to agree with you on that basis alone. However, enshittification is not a bug, it’s a feature.

Welt ,

It’s a pretty terrible feature then. Feature is a weird word

TheObviousSolution , (edited )
@TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee avatar

I still stand by what I said and only add an addendum, all companies enshittify themselves eventually or cease to exist before it happens.

In your counterexample, the problem is that the founders eventually die, and then the time comes for that company to be passed down, and then you are just proving my point. Even stores like LTT Store and GamersNexus’ will eventually enshittify themselves or cease to exist, because they will eventually have to pass ownership and even their owners will feel some remorse if they vanish it into the void instead of leaving it off for their family to inherit.

If it’s a small localized family business, it can exist for longer without compromising itself because it will not receive as much pressure and the services it has to concern itself are much more limited, but otherwise and even then, enshittification is as avoidable as death.

NutWrench ,
@NutWrench@lemmy.world avatar

Google’s motto in 2003: “Don’t be evil.”

They sure let that motto slide.

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

Well yeah, they superceded it in 2015 and eradicated it in 2018. They were doing evil before then too, of course, but I guess at that point they felt like they could just drop the mask.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •