My dislike of Google (Alphabet) as an organization is my motivation. I want nothing to do with them.
Privacy was the reason it started, but I was also constantly bothered by the growing annual profits they earned from people basically giving away access to their information and livelihoods for free. I realized how valuable our information is, and the only way to break this deepening centralization and control of it, was to take it all back. Self-hosting and supporting FOSS are my methods to regain control in this war. It has become a sort of holy war for me at this point. Lol
Privacy is my biggest thing. But, no. Then there's the whole "I don't to put all my eggs in one basket" argument too. Last, but not least: my battery life is also much better when all of the invasive tracking is blocked :)
Especially when the person carrying the basket like to chuck eggs out of it at random. Never know when google will discontinue a service.
I agree with this. I actually feel that the way they have restricted certain advanced search strings on the search engine is the most criminal of all. To me, watering down search results on a product that was previously excellent, is manipulation and control of information and thus, restricts people actual life. They are an extremely sly company and the control goes all the way to the top.
What are examples of advanced search strings they're restricting? I haven't heard of this. Do other search engines restrict them?
It started as a privacy thing but as I dug deeper, I found that all of the foss alternatives I found were simply much better in terms of functionality & usability
Primarily. Secondarily, to avoid putting all my eggs in one basket. As in, not using one singular network of services, and instead spreading it out. Diversify yo services.
- Lack of privacy
- Arbitrary cancel culture with no recourse
- Corruption and bloating of open standards like web
- Non consensual logins (android, chrome)
- Sabotage of federated services (email, xmpp)
- Suggestion of new tracking methods (like FLoC) when old tracking methods (like 3rd party cookies) are phased out
- Centralization of information flow (eg: AMP)
- Bait and switch tactics (like YouTube ads)
- Support for horrible laws (like illegitimate DMCA strikes)
- Locking down devices (with remote attestation, safetynet api, etc)
- Geolocking apps unnecessarily
- Invasive use of credit card information to prove location (why not just use GPS or cell info?)
- Incompatibility with open standards to achieve user lockins (eg: IMAP, caldav, carddav)
- Riding the open source wave with projects that don't behave like one (AOSP, chromium)
- Untrustworthiness when it comes to long term presence of services
It was secondary to challenging big tech corporations and their abuses to the Global South.
Ads. I am not interested in content that paid the most for Ads. I'm looking for content that exists not to make money for the website, or the person creating that content. So given those things, Google provides negative value to me.
