A lot of people either weren't there or have been totally overwhelmed by the current view so don't realize things were different once.
Companies like Google were once considered actually good, and with some good reason. They produced software that was useful, but also stable -- people lived with win 9x for half a decade and between the OS crashing, wiping out your FAT, requiring a reinstall, and the reinstall being broken junk, people were used to their software being kind of junk. They provided that product free of charge due to ads which were shockingly reasonable and non intrusive compared to the brutal ads on most of the internet (and this was largely pre-adblock, you couldn't just install an extension and get normal internet yet)
It might look naive now, but it was a more optimistic time. It seemed like we were on the verge of a new era -- and we were, just not in the way any of us envisioned.
Companies like Google were once considered actually good, and with some good reason. They produced software that was useful, but also stable -- people lived with win 9x for half a decade and between the OS crashing, wiping out your FAT, requiring a reinstall, and the reinstall being broken junk, people were used to their software being kind of junk. They provided that product free of charge due to ads which were shockingly reasonable and non intrusive compared to the brutal ads on most of the internet (and this was largely pre-adblock, you couldn't just install an extension and get normal internet yet)
It might look naive now, but it was a more optimistic time. It seemed like we were on the verge of a new era -- and we were, just not in the way any of us envisioned.
I'd say most people figured it out eventually.
You'll note I'm not even remotely defending them as they exist today. The only google product I still use regularly is youtube, since they have a lot of creators who don't post anywhere else. I run my own non-google searx instance with a yacy instance for search. It's been a long time I've been trying to be decentralized off of big tech as much as possible in general, and google specifically.
I'm solely explaining why people might have seen things differently back then. Even by 2013 I suspect a lot of people still didn't realize how bad it was to hitch your wagon with Google.
I really like Nextcloud news as an RSS reader. Lets me read the news online from anywhere, but also has a great app on android that syncs to the nextcloud instance.
You'll note I'm not even remotely defending them as they exist today. The only google product I still use regularly is youtube, since they have a lot of creators who don't post anywhere else. I run my own non-google searx instance with a yacy instance for search. It's been a long time I've been trying to be decentralized off of big tech as much as possible in general, and google specifically.
I'm solely explaining why people might have seen things differently back then. Even by 2013 I suspect a lot of people still didn't realize how bad it was to hitch your wagon with Google.
I really like Nextcloud news as an RSS reader. Lets me read the news online from anywhere, but also has a great app on android that syncs to the nextcloud instance.
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