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DOJ says Google must sell Chrome to crack open its search monopoly (www.theverge.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/technology

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[–] Kbobabob 7 points 1 week ago (5 children)

What is the issue with docs, sheets, drive, phones, calendar, play store?

There seems to be plenty of options in all of these spaces. Play store isn't even on a lot of android devices.

[–] BenLeMan 18 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Correct. My example for another necessary intervention would be YouTube. That's a space in which Google does have a monopoly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Exactly. There are workable alternatives to most of the others, but YouTube has a stranglehold on that type of content due to the network effect. Examples of alternatives:

docs/sheets/drive - Microsoft Office 365, OnlyOffice, or self-host LibreOffice Online (through Collabora CODE builds); if you just need drive, there's also BackBlaze, AWS, DropBox, etc
phones - I use GrapheneOS on their Pixel devices, but plenty of other Android phones support LineageOS/DivestOS/CalyxOS
calendar - still looking for a replacement for my smart watch, but I've been using my Nextcloud install; there are also some FOSS calendars that support CalDav as well, so look around
maps - I've been using Organic Maps, which has been great; main problem is searching for addresses, but if it's in there, the directions so far have worked fine; there's also Apple maps, Bing maps, and probably some others
translate - it's built in to Firefox, and it seems to work well enough in a pinch

But there's really not much for YouTube. I guess there's Odyssee, Rumble, and a few others, but they don't have anywhere near the content as YouTube, so they're not really practical alternatives. I actually sub to Nebula which is the closest to a replacement so far, but there's still a ton of content that doesn't have a direct replacement there.

[–] Brodysseus 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Off topic, but how do you like graphene? I am thinking of making the switch on a pixel 7a, but I have a fear it'll be like having Linux on my phone where things randomly don't work and then I have the hobby where I make it work

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I really like it, but I also mostly use F-Droid apps. You can install Google Play in the regular app sandbox, which prevents the worst of the issues andn provides most of the benefits.

That said, there are still some caveats:

NFC payments don't work - I use a Pixel watch instead, which works fine (it's paired to a separate profile on my phone with Google Play installed)
some banking apps don't work (some check if your phone OS is stock)
some apps just don't work without Google Play services running (e.g. the Sensi app for my smart thermostat), and some have issues even with it running

But other than that, it works pretty well! I have three profiles set up:

Owner - default, with no Google Play
Work - handful of work apps using my work Google account
Google - apps that require Google Play, using a fresh Google account

I'm using a Google Pixel 8, and it does what I need it to do.

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