How so? If I don't like my internet provider, my only other option is dialup. If I don't like Google, there's multiple alternatives for all of their services that I use
While you can place your data in services which are not Google, if you want to consume data, you are often going to have to deal with Google. For instance, almost anyone who shares any sort of video whatsoever puts it on YouTube. It doesn't matter if I'm not a YouTube user, I have to go to YouTube if I want to watch someone else's videos.
And Google is far more than just where you go to search or store your email. Somewhere around 90% of the web uses Google Analytics, Google Ads, or Google Fonts, so they can track you regardless of where you go online. And that's before you get into the fact that plenty of websites are on Google's cloud services, which you may not even know. (I left Google Docs for another service, for instance, but it's still hosted on Google's servers.) Even if you're not logged into a Google account, Google is tracking you and profiling your behavior across the web. (Google also collects credit card data, so they can track you in brick and mortar stores now too.)
Using Google's browser to access the web is also becoming increasingly inescapable, now that the company with the second largest market share in web browsers is switching to Chrome's codebase. Firefox is nearly the last remaining holdout against Chromium. In fact, the very protocol we use to talk to the web is constantly being revised primarily on Google's lead and direction. HTTP/3, QUIC, DNS-over-HTTPS, etc. is all about moving the web's standard to something more palatable to Google's business models, and making them harder to block or filter out.
It's incredibly naive to believe you can escape Google. I've spent years de-Googling, and there's plenty of data Google still has on me.
ISP monopolies are a big problem, but they won't follow you when you move. A high bar for escape, to be sure, but escaping Google likely requires an even higher bar: Entering the witness protection program and getting a new identity.
What a joke. To claim that for example using Chrome is “inescapable” is pure hyperbole. You’re worried about Google tracking your credit card purchases but not worried about credit card companies tracking that? Because I assure you they do. And ISP monopolies do follow you when you move: across huge swathes of the US you have one or maybe two options for internet access.
> Firefox is nearly the last remaining holdout against Chromium.
And the reason they don't have more market share is because Chrome is still faster and provides a better experience on average than Firefox does. I switched (back) to Firefox a few years ago, and I'm mostly happy with it. But when I try to get others to switch, those that end up not switching try for a few days and run into horrible performance issues that cripple their browsing experience. Clearly this isn't a universal issue (my experience is fine), but it's a big enough issue that it likely hampers further adoption.
I pretty much never hear "Firefox doesn't work properly on X site" as a reason they can't use Firefox. In the end, people use Chrome because it tends to give a better experience for people, even given its lack of respect for their privacy.
