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Discussion on: Are we Developers helping Google to build an unstoppable monopoly?

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vitalcog profile image
Chad Windham

Would you pay for all of these different services if they would offer full privacy and zero data collection?

I think about this often. And the answer is yes. I think about this often because the reality is, the big guys (Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.) do a LOT of work. They have LOTS of talented employees making all this stuff. You have to pay those employees somehow. Google HAS to make money. I've been realizing for a long time now, that we either go back to the old way (70's, 80's, early 90's) of PAYING for the software you use up front with cash, or paying in some other way later to use amazing free stuff. Google isn't evil, they do a lot of amazing things. But they are becoming (maybe have already) an enormous, world impacting, super-monopoly thingy... Either people decide they wanna pay for cool stuff with cash or pay to be advertised to. (or maybe somewhere in between). Look at what happened with TV. It used to be pretty much just shows and news, and of course some advertising to help stations afford to produce. Then there was premium cable. Few if no ads. Eventually a lot of that stuff gets ads too, because money. Advertising is super prevalent in our culture because stuff has to get paid for somehow...

I don't necessarily think the way things are now is awful. But I personally would like to see a change back towards paid for services. Either way, large businesses come and go, establish themselves as monopolies, die off, get replaced. Amazon, Facebook and (probably) Google will die one day. The work these companies do is amazing though, their employees need to get paid somehow.

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rhymes profile image
rhymes

I would say Google can be evil and do amazing stuff at the same time, it happens very often in giant companies with many divisions and monopolistic tendencies