Better to De-Google sooner rather than later imho and it’s fairly safe to assume corporate greed will continue to send it’s products and services deeper into the abyss. I think using alternatives now will make life easier in the future as Google becomes less useful with each passing day. Also, just using Google gives them access to personal data to harvest and ad revenue. I think we should try to be conscientious consumers whenever possible and use less evil alternatives. I don’t want to support Google’s enshitification of the Internet, censorship, anti-competitive practices, etc…

This is the first you’ve heard about Google/Youtube censoring people or altering search queries? It must have been a decade ago when they removed Kodi from autocomplete because “it was used by pirates.” Even when I disagree with the people they remove, which is most of the time, I am still uncomfortable with a for profit corporation like Alphabet Inc having that much power to decide what people can and cannot see in addition to manipulating search results.

Nearly every content creator I follow talks about not being about to talk about certain issues for fear of being canceled. That’s censorship, maybe not Chinese style putting you in jail, but it’s still corporate censorship. Google has plenty of defense contracts, as well as contracts with other government agencies. Their previous CEO now leads the Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA) and they work with the defense department on AI and robotics.

A company as untrustworthy and clandestine as Google will make it difficult to connect some dots, but corporation are legally structured to always act in accordance with shareholder interest and Google legally has the right to remove whatever content it wants as a private company. Of course they remove, alter or censor results and content in order to increase profits, their CEO is legally required to act in this way to fulfill the mandate of their position.

Isn’t greed inherently evil? Google takes it to a new level as they aren’t only a greedy corporation, but a military contractor embedded into the military industrial complex. So, when the US gets involved in a conflict Google profits and they control the flow of information through their search and video platform monopolies. They remove content critical of US military intervention, not to protect national security, but their profits from the defense sector.

I’ll never understand corporate apologists that live to defend the billion dollar companies ruining the Internet. Google is an ad company, but you can’t believe they’d alter search queries to sell ads? How could you possibly trust Google after they’ve been caught illegally sniffing people’s Wi-Fi with their Google Maps vehicles, spying on kids in school with Chromebooks and destroying incriminating documents in a federal court case to hide their actions?

In my experience the suffering of losing a romantic love is less intense the second time, but the falling in love and passion can also be less intense and take longer to build up as you’re more guarded with your heart after being heartbroken before.

Thanks for the tips in this post, very helpful!