It’s pretty much the way of the world: beyond the basic enshittification story that has been so well told over the past year or so about how companies get worse and worse as they get more and more …
All companies want open standards and regulation of the big players when they’re small. All companies want high barriers to entry and regulation of the small players when they’re big.
All companies want what is best for them. In that matter, they differ very little from people.
It's because interest rates went up and the free VC money tap was turned off so all these companies have to actually turn a profit, so they're squeezing us with every lever they control.
It definitely feels like a transition period for the whole Internet. Tech platforms finally reached their maximum user potential and scale, so now it's time to turn the screws.
They all think we need them, so now we figure out if they're right.
I used to give Google money for services (Drive and YouTube), but I've already stopped doing that because of their evil ways. This just hammers it home that much more.
Edit: The shitty part is what a cool company it used to be. And to watch it destroy itself like this is just sad.
This is my biggest complaint. They were the best way to access the sum of all human knowledge. Now I NEVER find things relevant to my search, just things that can be sold to me. Things like the “-“ character no longer work. I still get the excluded term in top results. It garbage now and everyone at google is to blame not just the executives.
Might get there. Right now I just have external SSH access (key only) to get to the files. I also need an offsite, so it's all sent to a remote server with rsync and gocryptfs. I only have about 90 GB of stuff on there right now; I don't do any media serving.
Honestly, this is about what I expect from Google nowadays. It's surprising when they manage to live up to the "Don't be Evil" motto they used to have.
At this point what they learn in business schools is the full bestiary of legal and illegal tricks and scams you can use to extract money from us cattle and contribute as little as possible to the upkeep :(
Regulatory capture seems about on par for Google these days. I suppose I'll be switching back to OnePlus for Android devices; that'll be about it for Google stuff in my home.
Everyone seems to be missing an obvious detail- there was a related and even more dangerous piece of legislation reintroduced recently. It's known as the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), and that would have immense impacts on Google's (specifically, YouTube's) operations.
This is an example of them trying to claim the other bill isn't needed, because they can self-regulate. You'll notice how this also purports to protect kids, but in a way that is much easier and cheaper for Google to implement.
Its deeply worrying development seeing Google came out with the narrative saying they are against mandated age verification while secretly saying they do support it atleast that what I get from this article.