this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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Nah. Demanding the ISPs to block traffic to Google domains would be quite effective.
This isn't like the great firewall of chine where you want to prevent absolutely all traffic. If you make it inconvenient to use, because CSS breaks or a js library doesn't load or images breaslk, its already a huge step into pushing it out of the market.
Enterprise market would be much harder, a loooot of EU companies rely on Google's services, platforms and apps, and migrating away would take a lot of time and money.
Filter it based on what? Between ESNI and DNS over HTTPS, it shouldn't be possible to know, which domain the traffic belongs to. Am I missing something?
Edit: Ah, I guess DNS over HTTPS isn't enabled by default yet.
China blocks ESNI and DoH. You have to find a DoH server that is not well known and have to fake the host name.
But if you actually do that, lol
Just filter out googles ASN and ip's. And stop peering with them on BGP. Simples
Im not supporting this by the way. I think the internet should be free and open, without governments blocking what I can access.
The onpy free internet will be tor. The normie internet has been too naughty and spawned shitty giants who think they can treat us like cattle. Break the critical mass and network effects, kill the blitzscale cheaters trying to enslave us. We do not need them, they need us.
IP block it. Boom there goes eSNI and DNS.
Sure, it's crude, but again: it doesn't have to perfect, it just needs to create havoc with Google services to push away a regular user, who has no idea what DNS even is.
A better approach though is to fine Google, with a % of revenue increasing until compliance. They'll very quickly be incentivised to comply or shutdown.
The whole argument was about blocking search only, considering the damages suddenly completely blocking google would do. Yes, you can block google data centers completely, but dude, would that cause chaos.
I said that multiple times already.
Worthwhile chaos. It's exactly that fear of consequences that enables their power
Unnecessary chaos
Taking a stance against corporate overreach feels extremely necessary to me.
That is like saying standing up to authoritarianism is extremely necessary, while proposing to drop nukes on Russia. There are 100 better ways to do it.
Yes you're right, blocking a single corporation is totally similar to dropping a nuclear weapon on a civilian site, you've shown me the error of my ways.
Holy fucking hyperbole, Batman!
When looking at the relative difference between cost of your solution, it's benefits and cost of normal solutions, yes. It is extremely similar.
But go ahead nitpicking my exact choice of comparison instead of addressing the glaring issue with your argument.
What "normal solutions" are actually in progress with any real potential of happening? Be for fucking real.
Meanwhile what insane doomsday scenario do you think would happen if Google services were banned and people had the given period to find alternatives?
You're talking about a fantasy solution that doesn't exist then blowing the consequences of this possible action wildly out of proportion in gross hyperbole.
Fines.
Besides, your solution is in progress or "has better chance" of happening? Wake the fuck up.
Google runs 12% of all cloud services through google cloud. Yes, I expect a "doomsday scenario" if you just shut that down.
Sure, give people and companies 5-10 years to migrate and it will probably be fine in terms of chaos, though I would still be very interested to know how many billions of € would the migration cost.
I think people and societies are vastly more resilient that you're implying, and would survive an admittedly complex 6 month period to switch necessary services. Would it be hard? Yeah absolutely. But I've never accepted "but it's so hard!!" as valid reason to hold off positive progress.
Progress towards what? People migrating to equally scummy Amazon and Microsoft? What possible progress could blocking google bring, that it would be worth people potentially going without paychecks because accounting sw was not working. Or being unable to access services because they register with gmail they can no longer access. Factories shutting down because their logistics tracked everything in a google spreadsheet they can no longer access and have no backup.
Not to mention people who could outright die if some hospital software somewhere relies on some google service.
None that insane hyperbole doomsday scenario would happen. None of it.
Ok, I disagree, but let's say it wouldn't. You admit yourself it would still be hard. What is the advantage of doing it? What is that mythical "progress" of yours, that would be achieved by blocking google cloud, as opposed to just search and whatever other problematic service?
Step one in saving us from the oncoming corporate technocracy?
How does pushing people from google to Amazon/Microsoft cloud achieve that? Or do you expect people and companies will magically not need cloud services anymore?
My friend, you yourself have been implying this whole time that Google's infrastructure is too vital and important to remove - how do you not see that this means they are too powerful? Remember trust-busting? Remember anti-monopoly activism? Nobody thought that by breaking up the railroads people wouldn't need trains anymore, but they understood the danger of allowing a single company to have such market dominance and what it that would mean for consumers. Same thing here. And yes, I'm aware this requires continual diligence as the phone companies that were once PacBell are now bigger than it was, but that lacking of failure to continue enforcing anti-trust doesn't mean the concept is wrong.
No single company should be allowed to have such influence that very idea of them going away leads to the very doomsday considerations we've been talking about. That's what this is all about.
How do you not see, that banning one company would just increase the monopoly the remaining companies hold?
Google is not even the largest cloud provider. Amazon's AWS has 30%, Microsoft's Azure 20%, Google is third with 12%.
You can't "bust monopolies" by reducing the number of options. You need to increase the number of competitiors.
That's exactly what the US government did under Teddy Roosevelt when it forced by law these large entities to divest and break up into smaller ones not subsidiarized to each other. And yes, they should also do this to Amazon and Microsoft.
edit: I guess I should say I understand they can't force them to break up in this instance, but they can simply state they won't do business with the entities at present and recommend it. If that doesn't happen, I am confident other savvy investors will be happy to fill any hole left by these giants. The world will keep turning, I promise.
Right, so if you massively extend your proposal, it could maybe make sense to a nontechnical person. Congratulations. Your original idea of just blocking google is still stupid and counterproductive to your stated goal.
Anyway, the real issue isn't lack of competitors. It is vendor lock-in and lack of independent data backups. It would take significant effort for most companies to migrate from one cloud provider to another, since different providers use slightly different, incompatible technologies. And of course, if a cloud provider went down suddenly, a lot of data would be lost.