Offtopic: Believing in Google
Today it came to my attention again that we all are very upset about the NSA but we do not really ask about the non-agency releated problems we face. I am not talking about the British or Russian programs but about Google. It came to my mind when I was asked why I use FireFox and not Chrome.
http://commons.wikimedia.org
First I answered in the common way like "used to it, good plugins, good for developers" but another really good reason is another:
I do not want to use only products from Google for all my digital communication.
If you think about it Google is close to dominating each and every area of digital communication today much in a way that I do not really fear the NSA anymore. Everything they know about us is already known by Google too:
Googles Searchengine has a huge market share all over the world (for instance in Germany at over 90%), our smartphones are to a big part based on Android, Chrome is at least one of the most important Browsers, Google Hangouts will replace other messenger services, Google+ is one of the most important platforms for social media, Nexus smartphones are sold quite well, for years Google Maps has been the most important map service, technologies like SmartWatches with Android-operation system and/or Google Glass-Spectacles are rising and cloud harddrive-services like Google Drive is very common too while we are surfing with our Chrome books (Google's netbook with own OS) to use Gmail (Google's eMail service) to talk about, why Google Hangouts are better than Skype: Why should we have any fear about our data being kept by the NSA? Google knows more about us than any security agency could...
There are as many Google fanboys as Apple fanboys (which are growing into a ecosystem which is much like the one from Google – only smaller).
And if I would say something against Google, they pull out your heart...
My question is: Is it healthy that one company has that much power concerning the digital life? Has the history not shown that it never works out well if power is concentrated that much?
Some may argue, that it was Microsoft in early times who had that kind of market share – but I will say: Microsoft ware never that dominante and there were always alternatives somewhere... but what would happen if you had to let go all your Google-services and hardware tomorrow or even worth: What if Google is manipulating us?
I think this developement is very very threatening... what do you say?
Do I exaggerate this or are we stearing towards very unsave waters?