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0 pointsal_borland7d ago0 comments

The problem is that these companies can remain on life support for decades, phoning it in and making things continuously worse as their desperation grows.

If they follow the path of IBM and Broadcom, they will move away from the consumer market and focus more on the enterprise. If Google fully realized that vision it would be extremely disruptive. Them shutting down Google Reader practically killed RSS for quite a while. Imagine that level of disruption with products that have mainstream appeal… mail, maps, docs, search, etc. It would be pandemonium.

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phatfish6d ago

Pretty sure this would be the only way the rest of the world (except China) dumps US tech services, so it sounds great.

still_grokking7d ago

> mail, maps, docs, search, etc. It would be pandemonium

I would hardly notice, TBH.

There are alternatives for all of that.

account427d ago

Good for you. That doesn't change that millions of people rely on these daily, including many less technically inclined.

gessha6d ago

Real change starts with real pain. People aren’t interested in obsessively checking privacy settings in apps or disabling tracking everywhere and I don’t expect them to. Governments don’t protect them because of gestures widely at status quo. People will realize those services are important and there will be a massive realignment. That’s how I expect things will go.

minnowguy6d ago

Microsoft is already pivoting away from consumer products.

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