Fostering Stronger Competition for the greater good
We are addicted to Google yet we love it.
For better or worse, Google has been locking me into their closed ecosystem over the past few years. I use Chrome, Gmail, Calendar, Photos, Maps, Youtube, Docs and Google Play Music daily. Less frequently, I use Translate, Keep, and Flights. At work, I use AdSense, DoubleClick, Google Analytics, and Google Drive. I don’t believe this is an uncommon phenomenon, knowing all too well that some people only use Google’s products.
Google is an ad company with a chilling market dominance. They have been rising to dominance solely by gobbling up as much data as they can get their mammoth-like hands on. Their motto may have been “don’t be evil,” but that doesn’t presume anything about their vocation to conquer every minute aspect of our digital lives. Don’t get me wrong — Google offers first class products in every domain they enter (except messaging). In the past, critics argued Microsoft should be split up as they gained dominance. By no means am I suggesting that Google must be split up; I am suggesting we ought to try to use other products in order to force stronger competition. If Google had to answer more often to products and innovation sparked by competitors, the entire industry would yield better results. Instead the Google monolith seems to be our only source of innovation. That is what needs to change, and it won’t necessarily be an easy change. Personally, I wanted to feel the painful withdrawals from the lack of my daily Google fix, but I didn’t have the willpower to go cold turkey.I did my best to taper off their products one at a time for nearly a month. If I can inspire others to do the same, then we’ll be that much closer to a market solution for the Google problem.
Chrome = Firefox or Vivaldi*
I resolved upon Firefox among the many unique web browsing alternatives. Prior to this project, I passively had been observing Mozilla aggressively advertising their flagship update named Quantum. I’ve viewed highway side billboards coinciding with online ads describing the update as “fast for good”. It seemed to good to be true: more speed, more privacy, most customization, more developer tools, more everything. Their ads convinced me.
Within the first ten minutes, I realized the overall experience would generally be the same. I then graduated from basic web browsing tasks to more sophisticated browser tasks: web development. I was pleasantly surprised at the striking similarity of these tools compared to Chrome.
There are also a few others that are built on the same engine that powers Chrome. Vivaldi and Epic Browser are my favorites. The former has great customization and the latter is good for privacy. The problem is they are still reliant on an open source project organized by Google called Chromium.
Chromecast = Amazon Fire, Roku, or HTPC
Running Firefox at home was completely another story. During dinner preparations, I find myself playing current events I stream from youtube. I quickly realized my dependency upon Chromecast would be a blocker requiring some additional hardware.
I required myself to thoroughly review these products for the purpose of this article. I immediately jumped to craigslist to find some used Amazon Fire ($40) and Roku ($30-$70). After reviewing them I can safely suggest either alternative will work fine. I would suggest if you have Amazon Prime to purchase the Fire.
The more advanced option is to buy or build a home theater PC (HTPC). The HTPC is essentially a sophisticated Fire or Roku. It can have local storage, stream and record live tv, and basically anything a regular computer is able to do. I recommend this option if you are comfortable getting your hands dirty and you are interested in having the most control over your media.
Google Search = DuckDuckGo
Google Search was the simplest to switch. I used DuckDuckGo and found it to work rather well. It included many of the “instant answers” features of Google such as stopwatches, conversions, character lookups, and weather reports. These are added via their Instant Search APIs from company’s like Wikipedia, Wikia, Github, and more.
It had one annoying drawback — lack of personal integration. The benefits of engulfing oneself in an ecosystem, offers many unique advantages: it can quickly provide directions to frequented places, offer customized searches, and create custom reminders. This was a small price to pay to move away from Google. One with a strong concern for privacy would actually consider this a plus.
Google Maps = OpenStreetMap
Google Maps may have been one of the most difficult. The Verge recently posted an article aweing at the sheer level of detail even in small rural towns. The quality of the competitors is just lagging light years behind. Waze was one of the best but it is now owned by Google so I cannot recommend that for the purposes of this article.
On a desktop, an open source solution called OpenStreetMap has been a good option for me. It has loads of data, powered by local communities, with a mission of keeping the geo data free
and open to everyone. For me, that moral value makes up the slight quality difference. The generically named “GPS Navigation” (iOS, Android) consumes the data from OpenStreetMaps. Overall, the app is a solid 7/10 but nowhere near as good as Google’s Maps product.
Over on iOS, Apple Maps has dramatically improved since initial launch but I still don’t think it comes close to Google.
Why the bad apps? — I believe the amount of resources required to build a good map app is large barrier to entry. The best option is supporting OpenStreetMap. You will be contributing to an open community with the goal of . Developers will then be able to use that data to build more higher quality mobile apps.
YouTube = Vimeo and Facebook
There are lots of video streaming services (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.) but none of these offer the ability for anyone Joe to publish at an audience that consumes 5 billion videos per day. The switch from YouTube to Vimeo was painless as far as the user experience is concerned. However, the breadth of content nor the audience the publisher has access to compares.
Google has a massive amount of influence with the audience it has genuinely earned through expert product and platform development. That influence comes with great responsibility. YouTube is a great product but the competition can make Google complacent and stop innovating. This along with the feud between Amazon and Google are two strong reasons to look elsewhere for videos.
There is a solution to reach a similarity vast audience — Facebook. Although, it’s trading one large company for another it does force some healthy competition. With Facebook’s 1.37 billion daily active users you can reach a broader audience, albeit one that isn’t as primed for video consumption. Include: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-apos-fb-video-efforts-151203991.html?.tsrc=rss
Although Google’s grip on our lives is getting tighter and tighter, we can fight back by incentivising strong competition. I discovered it is possible to boycott Google entirely without sacrificing much quality. Sadly, much is not none; you will forgo the Google ecosystem in favor of disparate apps. The biggest sacrifice will be a sense of miraculous refinement. Seemingly only large companies like Google and Apple can offer this immense attention to detail.
I went back to using some of Google’s product. Maps was irreplaceable for me. It’s just too good. I also found myself going back to YouTube as the breadth and depth of content just destroys the competition.
I challenge you to take this same approach for whichever company has you in their grips. If you only use Apple products, trying switching over to Google. If you only use Microsoft products try switching over to apple. Competition is good and being a fan boy is just as bad as being a dug in an political ideology.
Take a look more detailed look of kicking the Google habit for good:
