Comment by joelthelion
20 days ago
I think this might backfire in that it might be enough to prompt technical people to seriously start looking for alternatives.
I personally will be extremely unhappy if I no longer can run dns66, newspipe or Firefox with ad blocking on my phone.
I think I might also start spending less time on my phone, which would be a good thing for me and a terrible thing for Google (in aggregate of course).
Exactly! And I'll even stop paying for their other products as well.
The problem is that Google has exactly zero products that it gives a rats ass if you pay for. Google is, was, and always will be an advertising company. Users aren't the customer for Google, they're the product, and frankly the knuckle-draggers that mindlessly consume everything Google makes without any care to a not-so-slow slide into tyranny are far more valuable advertising targets than you are.
Online advertising is a whale hunting game. There is a subset of society who genuinely are so suggestible that you can convince them they need a new truck with an online ad. They are largely a disjoint set from people with strong opinions about anything, never mind the subset of those who care deeply about the freedom to modify their devices to suit our interests rather than those of the megacorps.