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Lively and useful discussion here, thanks everyone!

Here's my motivations on this, thread👇
1/ First, not the reason: because I think Google is a bad company somehow. They've done a huge amount of good for tech and in the world broadly. And their products are generally excellent. ⭐️
2/ One general objection I have is with concentrations of power. I usually root for (and try to support) underdogs in my small show of support for balance in the world.
3/ Next, I've grown a distaste for some aspects of “surveillance capitalism” in tech circa 2020. I'm ok with some tradeoffs of privacy for convenience. But the extent to which all tech is funded by ads and monetized personal data is warping software in a way I don't like much. 🤔
4/ I like to pay for software directly whenever I can so that I can be the customer and not the product. Outside of Gsuite orgs, most of Google's stuff is not monetized that way.
5/ Managing my Google logins (personal + work). I find myself sighing loudly and/or swearing at their login page at least once a day. Like when Google Docs fails to choose the right identity for a shared document. Or when I can't accept a GMail invite sent to an aliased email. 😫
6/ I don't like the entanglement of so many different things on one identity. My GMail account is a master key that unlocks all kinds of critical accounts, from DNS management to my vote-by-mail forms. I want to secure that account differently than, say, my YouTube playlists.
7/ Last but not least: I prefer using products from independent companies that do just one thing and do it well. ❤️ That includes indies like Ulysses, Overcast, and Fathom; but also venture-funded biguns like Slack, Notion, Figma, and N26.
8/ Google is now a sprawling empire built on ads and data monetization. Their technology and products are good. Great, actually.
9/ But with digital tools such a foundational part of my life and work, I'm starting to really care not just what those tools are but also who makes them, and how they are sustainably funded.
10/ That means tools from focused, independent companies that I can pay directly. 👍🏼
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