What if Google closed?
10What would happen if Google stopped providing all their services with no intention of ever providing those services again?
For example: What if everyone who uses Gmail got an email from Google saying they’re getting out of the email business, and all Gmail addresses will stop working in a week? Or what if they stopped providing their map service?
Would society crumble? Would it be no big deal? Would all the Google Pixels become bricks? Would they even be allowed to close, or would the FCC take control of the company? Or do I have no understanding of the technology biz and there is no way Google can close because that’s not how it works?
I ask because I have so many Google apps, and some of them are pretty useful.
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Gmail would be the biggest blow. It’s the de facto default email service thanks to being cool at just the right time. Without it we’d need to go back to Yahoo or something.
@lljk
@Ignorant @lljk It could be worse. AOL is still around.
@lljk @narfcake
@Ignorant @lljk At least Prodigy ceased to exist a while back. They managed to make the average AOL user at the time look good.
@lljk
What about Outlook? It’s not Gmail, but close enough.
Even their more popular services have decent alternatives –Maps has Bing and Apple Maps, Search has Bing and DuckDuckGo, Home has the Echo.
The biggest hit might be Android. Not sure if you can count it, given its open source nature, but it will be a few years until another open source alternative takes its place. By the time a company develops, announces, and optimizes a new OS for compatibility with most former Android devices, Apple will either have gained millions of new iOS users, or provide a modified version with features and compromises that former Android users are willing to accept.
@lljk Don’t say Yahoo. That’s like saying we’d go back to AOL.
@DVDBZN Don’t lose sight of how many other services rely on Google’s tech and data. Alexa would be as dumb and worthless as… well Alexa without Google data. Also, Amazon’s OS is based on Android. Echo, Fire TV and tablets. IIRC, only Kindle uses a more pure form of Linux, but I’m not 100% sure about that bit.
As far as mobile OSs, there’s always Win Mobile. Or WebOS.
@Fuzzalini @lljk yeah msn emails > yahoo emails. I have both.
I might never read those 30,000+ unread emails.
@lljk Eh. I’ve been off gmail for a while now. It’d be chaos for most people, but I got tired of them making/scrapping apps, and reading all of my emails for advertising
Others would fill the void. It’s how we roll…
/giphy entropy
The
thousandsdozens of folks still using a Windows Phone will proclaim victory.@narfcake Six. There are six left.
@Gregcook04 @narfcake
6.5 users - I use one occasionally.
That would be disastrous for me for a while until I moved everything to a new system.
They switch up products all the time. The most recent loss for me was Inbox earlier this year. It totally messed up how I manage emails and set reminders. Gmail and Tasks haven’t fully filled that void yet. I still have some adjusting to do, even a couple months later but I guess I’ll survive since I don’t have a choice.
@luvche21 somehow Notes are being phased out of certain Outlook platforms. I use desktop, iPad and smartphone for work and ideally take notes that sync on all of them. Not so much anymore…
@luvche21 You kinda do have a choice though, right? Move to something that isn’t going to get messed up by google’s dumb junk. It’ll be work, but if you get a service where you can use your own domain you never have to worry about changing your address again
We might have to … gasp … pay for such a service. We might even expect some privacy in return. Oh wait, you can do that today.
https://protonmail.com
PS: Many ISPs give you “free” email accounts, just like Google. AT&T outsources it to Yahoo. And Yahoo shares back your customer activity and profile. Nothing is free, except what you charge for your data.
@mike808 Yahoo also allows you to get your passwords stolen and doesn’t tell you about it. Yahoo passwords are constantly being used to try to break into other accounts and sending out ridiculous “I have your password and been watching you on your PC, please send me Bitcoin” phishing email.
@Fuzzalini @mike808 I got one of those the other day! Old password but also said they had me on webcam watching some unscrupulous web videos and self harming.
I don’t have a webcam… so there’s that.
@ecanada They meant to say it’s the neighbor’s webcam and they have it angled at your window.
@ecanada Self harm? That’s a new one. I am an IT consultant so I have clients call me all the time wondering if they should worry about those emails. I tell them to ignore them, you had a Yahoo account, your password got stolen. If you’re still using that 10 year old password, you probably should change it.
@mike808 Fuck yeah, ProtonMail. Never going back.
I would go back to Firefox, but I would have to find a new password manager.
@2many2no For free: LastPass and Bitwarden.
Haven’t used Bitwarden app on an Android device.
ProTip: setup different devices as “Identities” (what LP calls user profiles) in LastPass to share subsets with different devices. Mobile devices can be set to use a PIN and you need the master password to change identities. For desktop/laptop you can use 2FA like a Yubikey, but 2FA costs on both products.
If a device is list/stolen, the “identity” only has access to some passwords, and you can cut off a device by disabling offline use and revoking access. Recover the device, change the passwords in the profile/identity and uninstall/reinstall to register the device as new device, assign the profile/identity and you’re bscknin business.
@2many2no I tried going back to Firefox last year after that big update, but it just wasn’t as smooth of a browsing experience. The extensions aren’t near as great and it seemed slower overall.
@2many2no @luvche21 I left Firefox many years ago when all of a sudden it refused to play YouTube videos. I’ve heard they’ve improved it, but I’ve never looked back. Even Microsoft is using the Chromium code to make their new browser. That says a lot.
What if dogs ran the world?
@aetris There’d be a lot more naps
@lseeber It would be socially acceptable to pee wherever we want.
@aetris Charlie!
@cinoclav @lseeber and to smell each others junk/butts. I think otherwise we would be much happier
@tinamarie1974 Wait, you mean that’s not currently okay?
@cinoclav I mean it depends on who you are trying to sniff.
@aetris
If dogs ran the world, there probably wouldn’t be any humans.
@aetris @eonfifty I don’t know… they do love to be pet and have their bellies scratched. Difficult with paws.
I would lose so many pictures of my kids. I am suddenly questioning a lot of my life’s choices…
@zinimusprime I have all mine backed up on a PC and then on a local external hard drive. So if Google photos erases my stuff, I’ll still have the originals on my PC and hard drive. I’d probably have to pay amazon some dollars to have more cloud storage or something…
@medz I’ve been meaning to do the same for years. I should probably be doing the same… Add it to the to-do list…
@zinimusprime I made a habit of backing-up all photos to my PC each time I had to clear out space on my phone (or when I got a new phone) for two reasons: 1) To preserve a copy of the original picture in full resolution and 2) To have a local copy in case anything happened with google photos. I don’t let google automatically free-up space on my phone. Instead, I’ll periodically move all the photos/videos from the phone’s storage to my PC’s storage which also writes to an external drive.
When I had the Pixel, it would backup unlimited pics in the full, original resolution to google photos. Non-pixel phones will only do unlimited “high-quality” resolution backups.
@zinimusprime Are you questioning the pictures or the kids?
@cinoclav I want to make a joke about my kids and say both, but my kids are way too awesome. #humblebrag
POPSOCKETS! SPROCKETS! DAVY CROCKETT! AWESOME!
I’d probably need a week to switch everything over, but I’d survive. Email, cell phone plan, photo backups, preferred search engine and browser, sites/services that use google authentication, oh…the google 2nd form authentication I use for a cryptocurrency site… Probably others… I’d eventually have to find a new apps for text messages, notes, and other “official” google apps that I use. No more Wear OS watches, Android phones, or Android/Fire tablets? That would sure put a kink in my style.
Gizmodo had an interesting article series earlier in the year on avoiding the big tech companies:
https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-life-it-was-hel-1831304194
Here’s a direct link to the google article. I assume google no longer existing would have overlap with just not using it:
https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-up-everything-1830565500#_ga=2.109788613.1339556351.1549309045-1494158073.1547676718
@mossygreen Thanks, those articles were really interesting.
It would be very disruptive, but we’d get over it. The scary part is that if they went out of business, someone would probably buy their data.
If Google closed tomorrow, it would be pandemonium, on the level of Enron’s sudden closing- Google’s involved in so much that whole industries would be devastated over night, and almost every person in the country would feel the effects.
Google has their email, and cloud office products- Google for Business.
There’s Android, which would suffer mightily since access to Google’s stuff keeps it from being even more fragmented than it already is.
Education would suffer greatly, as Chromebooks would suddenly need to be replaced en masse, probably on a scale greater than Apple’s loss of market share in the 90s as people switched from Apple II’s to Windows PCs.
Google runs their own cloud offering- billions would be lost here.
In security, Google is a huge player- they own VirusTotal, probably the largest repository of malware information, and they now run a log management & threat detection platform called Chronicle.
Google is also a driving force behind Chrome, and Chromium.
There’s also all the open-source project work, including the Summer of Code program.
I’ve lost any fan feelings I once had for Google as they became quite evil, but losing them would pave the way for the alternate, just as evil microsoft to become even more dominant.
Thanks to everyone who responded. Your comments made me think about just how many and how much I use Google products. They’ve also convinced me to make a new email account and look in to getting a VPN app that blocks all Google connections. Generally, it seems everyone agrees Google shutting down would be an annoyance of widely varying degrees, but it’s something most people would get over, and that’s how I feel about it too.
However, I remember reading news that Google was buying a lot of “dark fiber” in the early or mid 2000s. In this case, “buying” means paying for exclusive use of the fiber optic internet cables for a specified number of years, usually a couple decades at least. I was wondering how much of that fiber is being used now, and I wonder if Google closing would mean most people would have to go back to dialup internet, or maybe not even have any internet access.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
/image courier v.everything us robotics