The grand old enshittification curve strikes again. Remember, as stated by Cory Doctorow, the process of enshittification entails these steps: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse t…
In what should be surprising to Noone, Google was just paying lip service about what it stood for from the beginning. When their motto was ‘do no evil’ it was a lie, they just stopped pretending.
Ever had one of those in-dash or on-window outdated GPS units that cost a pretty penny to keep current?
Ever had online storage and file transfer/sharing before Google Drive?
Ever searched before Google itself presented their search engine?
Ever had a "smart"phone before Android?
They may suck now with the increased enshittification of services… before they came along the web was a very rough place. And expensive as hell. Don’t discredit Google because you weren’t around to see how they improved things. Before it became about appeasing the stockholders, what Google bringing to the web was a -really- exciting time. Getting 1GB (and an ever increasing quota) for free webmail was fucking astounding, absolutely unheard of… and that was with the best spam filtering anyone had ever seen. Now everything that wasn’t done before Google did it is taken for granted.
That said. I have to admit there’s a sense of sadness within me when it comes to all of this. Google HAS gotten worse. And it’s compounded by the fact that I remember how much better they used to be. Now I’ve come to have to accept that I’ll be retiring my (singledictionaryword)@gmail address and start using Google services less. I’ll still be using Android, but exclusively third party roms and without dependence on GApps as default… and knowing that it has come to this fucking sucks.
1999-2009-ish was a fun time online. Endless possibilities. Google was a big part of that.
In what should be surprising to Noone, Google was just paying lip service about what it stood for from the beginning. When their motto was ‘do no evil’ it was a lie, they just stopped pretending.
Ever used email before GMail?
Ever had one of those in-dash or on-window outdated GPS units that cost a pretty penny to keep current?
Ever had online storage and file transfer/sharing before Google Drive?
Ever searched before Google itself presented their search engine?
Ever had a "smart"phone before Android?
They may suck now with the increased enshittification of services… before they came along the web was a very rough place. And expensive as hell. Don’t discredit Google because you weren’t around to see how they improved things. Before it became about appeasing the stockholders, what Google bringing to the web was a -really- exciting time. Getting 1GB (and an ever increasing quota) for free webmail was fucking astounding, absolutely unheard of… and that was with the best spam filtering anyone had ever seen. Now everything that wasn’t done before Google did it is taken for granted.
That said. I have to admit there’s a sense of sadness within me when it comes to all of this. Google HAS gotten worse. And it’s compounded by the fact that I remember how much better they used to be. Now I’ve come to have to accept that I’ll be retiring my (singledictionaryword)@gmail address and start using Google services less. I’ll still be using Android, but exclusively third party roms and without dependence on GApps as default… and knowing that it has come to this fucking sucks.
1999-2009-ish was a fun time online. Endless possibilities. Google was a big part of that.
Making quality stuff for free does not mean they were not doing shady things in the background.
I have no plan to boycott Google or anything, but they were nwver benevolent and usage has always been a tradeoff of data tracking for convenience.