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Am I alone in thinking that all the stuff I get for free (in exchange for some amount of targeted advertising) from Google is pretty cool and that these attempts to break up big tech are going to be very bad for consumers and the economy and is just punishing successful companies that produce products that customers want to use. You all can use mosaic/edge if you want to.

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You get nice stuff for free, right up until the moment Google decide that they've done enough. Then you get nothing. And the unfair funding and disparity in features means no competitors can ever provide a superior alternative.

And then it might not be for free. It's very tempting to rent-seek when you have a captive user base. That's bad for consumers and bad for the economy.

Focusing on what we get today is myopic and it's not by mistake that Google give them to us.

You are certainly not alone. I’d say you’re in the vast vast majority, just not necessarily on our little corner of the Internet (hackernews), but realistically probably the majority here as well.

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