Perhaps you’ve heard ofthe latest little row at Google—an employee had the temerity to publish his thoughts on the Google monoculture and suddenly is he is the primary target of SJWs everywhere, but especially those within Google itself. Because by virtue signalling at the top of our keyboards and Twitter accounts we’re showing “It wasn’t me!”, natch. Or maybe you haven’t. In the real world it honestly isn’t of earth moving significance.
I’m waiting for the inevitable “Boycott Teh Googlez!” to start. As someone who uses Google’s email service, search engine, browser and blogging platform, I’m not going to heed the call if it comes, thanks all the same.
First, as an email platform that I don’t have to shell out my coin for, Gmail works. I rarely see their advertising, because I use it as an IMAP host. I don’t care if they’re reading my messages–so is the NSA, CIA, DIA and God knows who else. There is nothing in my email that I would give a rip about seeing on a billboard at this point in my life.
As a search engine, they are one of the best out there. You can do better with some of the metasearch engines, but when you need it quick, Google delivers. You don’t want the ads? Use an ad blocker.
I use Chrome because it’s support for extensions allows me to add tools to it I need. If Edge or Brave or Firefox or whoever can match it, I may well switch. So far, no one has and I’m not.
And as for Blogger, well, I like that one the best. It allows me to publish things for the entire Intertubz to read, things that would have those virtue signalling Googlites frothing at the mouth (I sincerely hope) and I. Get. To. Do. It. On. Google’s. Dime.
Yeah, that’s the part I like the best about all of it. Most of the people at Google would detest the hell out of me, but their effort is what allows me to find things, browse the Intertubz effectively and communicate, and their company pays for it all.
If necessary, I can replace all these services in a day or so of concentrated effort and it will probably cost me $30 a month. But I like taking advantage of Google a lot more. It’s just a tiny bit of money they can’t use to be evil. Smells like a win to me.
I hadn't heard of the curfluffle at Google until I read about it here. Having read through some of the links, I have come to the conclusion that Google is not a place I would want to work. Sheesh! Fortunately, I work in a place where most people just keep their views to themselves and those that don't are easily ignored.
What if Google decides not to publish your content because one day, they think it doesn't agree with their liberal values? Or they say you violated their terms of service in some stupidly obscure way?
Hope, that's a fair question. I keep a backup of the blog that I update from time to time, probably not often enough. Fortunately, I don't really care if it disappears. If I feel the urge to keep on saying my piece, I'll just go somewhere else, probably WordPress or maybe SquareSpace, and start paying for it. Or not. I've always done this for me and my own purposes, so to be honest, it would really depend on how things were going at the time.