Back2source VS Killed by Google

> The funny thing is the site which should have been removed like the of Stackoverflow spam clones, or sites like Canva and Pinterest that make thousands of similar looking pages with slightly different heading are still allowed and rank on Google.

I recommend this userscript https://github.com/vladgba/Back2source for avoiding Stackexchange clones, it saved me a lot of time.

With Google’s graveyard[1] growing so fast, I’m careful with new Google announcements. An API like this sounds particularly problematic to replace sometime in future.

[1]: https://killedbygoogle.com/

Number 293 of killed things by Google: https://killedbygoogle.com/

> Google is large enough to not care about small opportunities. It ends up focusing on bigger opportunities

that result in shittier products overall. For example, just a few months ago they cut 17 features from Google Assistant because they couldn't monetize them, sorry, because these were "small opportunities": https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/11/google-is-removing-17-unde...

> all are excellent examples of Google's long term commitment to the product and constantly making things better and keeping them relevant for the market.

And here's a long list of excellent examples of Google killing products right and left because small opportunities or something: https://killedbygoogle.com/

And don't get me started on the whole Hangouts/Meet/Alo/Duo/whatever fiasco

> Sure it has shut down many small products but that is because they were unlikely to turn into bigger opportunities.

Translation: because they couldn't find ways to monetize the last cent out of them

>Google operates in China albeit via their HK domain.

The Chinese government has access to the iCloud account of every Chinese Apple user.

>They also had project DragonFly if you remember.

Which never materialized.

>The lesser of two evils is that one company doesn’t try to actively profile me (in order for their ads business to be better) with every piece of data it can find and forces me to share all possible data with them.

Apple does targeted and non targeted advertising as well. Additionally, your carrier has likely sold all of the data they have on you. Apple was also sued for selling user data to ad networks. Odd for a Privacy First company to engage in things like that.

>Google is famously known to kill apps that are good and used by customers: https://killedbygoogle.com/

Google has been around for 26 years I believe. According to that link 60 apps were killed in that timeframe. According to your statement that Google kills an app a month that would leave you 252 apps short. Furthermore, the numbers would indicate that Google has killed 2.3 apps per year or .192 apps per month.

>As for the subpar apps: there is a massive difference between the network traffic when on the Home Screen between iOS and Android.

Not sure how that has anything to do with app quality, but if network traffic is your concern there's probably a lot more an Android user can do than an iOS user tp control or eliminate the traffic.

> This is proved by countless “killed by Google” incidents..

Oh, the Google's Graveyard: https://killedbygoogle.com/

I was already starting to feel a little cornered in the whole Google ecosystem and a bit limited with stuff like backups, vendor lock in, etc. (and you always have the obvious hanging over your head) and ultimately, I think I just find the mental model of a SQL database more intuitive compared to a NoSQL database. So I thought to myself; "the longer I leave it, the harder it'll be to make the switch".