this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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They fund Mozilla a ton on purpose. They want a small subset of people to use Firefox. It keeps them from the monopoly investigations
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-google-keeps-paying-mozilla-s-firefox-even-as-chrome-dominates
I knew about that. They also pay to be the default search engine on Firefox.
But my joke was that these changes make it seem like they don't want people to use Chrome anymore and switch to Firefox instead. If users knew about this stuff and understood it, Firefox would bounce back.
I have already begun to move from Google services.
Look for other large corporations to continue this trend: offer a product to the masses for free, wait until you have little to no competitors and dominate in market share, then put it behind a pay wall or strongarm changes that most of the population doesn't understand. Oracle did it with Java, knowing most companies were too invested to look for alternatives, and now Google is doing it with their Chrome baked-in privacy changes and ad crackdown.
I expect to see more of this trend from "free" services as the people continue to wake up and take their personal data seriously. We know the government(s) won't do a thing to change the status quo, and I have no idea what else to do other than cry into my ramen and binge watch the death of a planet in 4K!
Unfortunately, the rich keep scarcity high to ensure they not only make the most money, but they can use less money to buy favors from those with less. Man greed sucks...
It’s even more insidious when you look at the shit Amazon does, im almost certain they hyper-aggressively track the popularity of products not made by them, ones that are made by small companies (and even individuals in some cases) for the sole purpose of seeing what’s popular with the masses and then they make their own shitty version of said product followed by undercutting the original products cost significantly. And when people go to search they of course put their shit product at the top of the search page so that’s the one the unaware will always buy. It’s kind of a genius business model if we are being honest, if you’re an absolute shit stain that completely lacks morals that is. I just can’t believe they’ve been allowed to do this for so long under the radar because I feel like I never hear people talk about that particular scummy tactic they use.