There are places to go. For replacing Google products/services there is Nextcloud. For search there is Brave search, among others. For Android there is plain AOSP which many privacy ROMs use.
The video attack is pretty novel but apart form that my only take away is boycott them with adblock, I was doing that even when I liked google it didn't make a difference to their bottom line.
This is like trying to destroy the ocean by pissing in it. Good luck!
I mean: I do not use GMail anymore, owning my own mail, I do dislike Alphabet services involution and business model, while I have to admit that respect of many others "big of IT" it offer back something valuable (just compare Google Maps with anything else as a personal navigation tools in car) I dot not consider a direct action against it as positive.
If we want Freedom we need to be free. Let's start having our data on our server instead of flood someone else with crap. Let's start owing our infra instead of focusing in cloning web(cr)apps others offer to the public, so let's say coming back to Usenet instead of creating Twitter/FB/Instagram clones, using mails locally without webmails and so on. Let's start rediscovering the LARGE superiority of desktop computing vs cloud+mobile crap.
THIS, done on scale and seriously would kill any GAFAM. Play like squatters does not.
We are trying with a fully independent search engine from the ground-up. Unlike most we are also not a proxy for, or correlated to, Bing (Microsoft) and/or Google. Apple is actually the biggest problem - users cannot add us (Mojeek) or others to the Safari search choice list. More here: https://blog.mojeek.com/2022/05/gatekeepers-of-the-western-w...
Had a thought recently that there’s a certain causal link between advertising and loneliness. An advert works best if it comes from a trusted source. And since inevitably it’s mostly crappy stuff which needs promotion, this erodes trust, limiting the comfortable social circle.
I don't really care if advertising is relevant to me. I just ignore it. I do care if services like search, YouTube and news websites stay free and don't go behind hard paywalls.
> I don't really care if advertising is relevant to me. I just ignore it.
I like to believe that about myself as well. But statistics say that we are probably both wrong.
On the other hand, I don't care at all whether YouTube and news sites remain "free". But of course they must do so, as they would not be viable businesses in a paid model (YouTube, and almost all news sites).
The main problem is the ROI they get on advertising, by being as large as they are and as inquisitive (anti-privacy) as they are they command a huge ROI per search, to the point where anyone not as large or more private cannot compete. Smaller engines cannot compete because they have less advertisers, less private engines cannot compete because they're not second guessing your next move.
Case in point paying Apple many billions a year to be the default search engine. Who else can do that?
Google should list alternative search engines in their search results. They're the best in the world at search but haven't earned that right in perpetuity. Surely the world's information deserves a more middle ground (and privacy)
It seems like you're implying that what the article suggests doing is theft. It is not.
Google's business model requires providing free services, if you take advantage of what they willingly offer (which is not theft), and they choose to spend more money than they make, their current business model becomes untenable.
However I don't know what their business model would turn into if everyone did what the article suggested, and the article made no mention of that either.
It's absolutely suggesting theft... The ads on many sites pay for the actual content on those sites.
In addition, I looked into the author's github commit history and one of their projects is aimed directly at stealing YouTube content.
An all-out war on Google's ad infrastructure may protect your privacy but how do you propose people actually get paid for the content you consume? Do they do it for free? For exposure? Sell subscriptions?
Not saying I’m participating, just saying the article doesn’t explain where to go post-Google.