i don’t want to offend anyone, but some open source/privacy enthusiasts dislike google, but why?? google has made chromium, android, etc and most of the things they do are open source, and not only that, they also support creative commons media or public domain. i know the privacy concernes they may have, but they would never do anything bad to you. i love google personally because of their commitment to open source software.
The bad thing is, I don’t think you even need to use it to be dominated. Google uses their 70% market share to push things like the Web Integrity API or new fingerprinting methods whether you use it or not. Diversity get’s thrown under the bus anyways. I’ve had a bit of a look at WebRTC during the videoconferencing times. It mainly matters what codecs Safari and Chrome implement these days.
Whatever messenging app your friends have preinstalled dictates if you can videocall them.
And their gmail account if the mails from your open source mailserver get accepted or just dumped into the spam folder.
I also use Android and have a Chromium based browser ready. I’m somewhat okay with it. But I don’t think that changes anything in the broader, global picture.
It affects me. I have to use Meta’s messenger instead of having an open and interoperable solution if I want to stay in contact with my friends. I can’t participate in contactless payments with my phone or rent those stupid e-scooters. My online banking app works, but I’m not sure if I could for example charge an electric car without a smartphone that has Google Services installed.
And I think a big tech company can’t buy their way out of something by also giving away a few open source things. The projects might be nice and usable and lead by smaller and distinct teams. But it doesn’t really make me like the company as a whole if 95% of their business is something else.