Not really.
The replies given, when you answer, presuppose that Big IT is desirable.
The question “Which of these Big IT providers would you stop using first?” doesn’t presume anything of the sort.
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It is a Farhad Manjoo column.
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When I looked at the list my first thought was “WTF is Alphabet?” So I dropped it first. It wasn’t until I finished and saw the results that I remembered it was Google’s rebranded name.
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Apple. Though I do use a Mac for work, they can buy me what ever.
Apple first, the only thing that I use that is made by them is their AAC encoder, which I extract from iTunes before I install it. I could easily manage without it.
Second, Facebook. The only reason I use it is because certain members of my family are near impossible to get in touch with otherwise. Otherwise it would have been first to go, there’s too much mental health damaging stuff there.
Amazon, Microsoft and Google manage to survive because they help me cope with my disabilities even though I dislike them for other reasons. I don’t think I could choose between them.
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I suppose I kinda feel bad for not having any idea who that is
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You haven’t been missing much.
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Facebook (i don’t have an account, so whatevs)
Microsoft (i don’t use their products anymore, so whatevs)
Alphabet (yeah, losing gmail and youtube and google would really suck) but
Amazon (i use them ALLLL the time) annd
Apple (happy life-long user of hardware & software, and some of the above is taken care of by them if the others go away)
1. Apple + Facebook (tie). I don’t use Facebook or any Apple products
2. Microsoft. I use Microsoft on my crappy home computer but use Linux at work. I’m about halfway there.
3. Amazon. I don’t use Amazon much, but I would not be able to buy socks or shoes if it weren’t for online retailers. Amazon just happens to be the most convenient, but there are others I could go to.
4. Alphabet. I don’t use Google search, but I have been using Google Maps more and more. Also, YouTube is pretty ubiquitous, so even if I personally were to quit YouTube and go to some other video site that has like three videos on it by comparison, pretty much every webpage I go to has a YouTube video somewhere in the content.
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I just learned that “Alphabet” basically means “Google”, which is the Search Engine and YouTube, and some kind of crappy web app shit and some kind of phone OS which I’ve never heard of. I like the Search Engine and the YouTube so I guess I’d choose that last.
Obviously Facebook is the most easily dispensed with. Amazon next, I don’t rely on it now, they are not essential. I’m sure I spend more with B&H Photo than Amazon these days. I try to avoid MS as much as possible–they have nothing I need. Google and Apple would probably be the last to go. If there were a decent Linux substitute for Indesign, I might reevaluate that.
If you’ve ever seen a smartphone made by, basically, anyone other than Nokia, Blackberry, or Apple, it probably runs Android.
So that’s almost every Samsung, LG, Sony, Huawei, OnePlus, Motorola, or HTC smartphone, as well as a few smaller manufacturers.
Even if you haven’t heard of the phone OS, you’ve probably seen people using the phones running it.
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facebook - use it once a day to check on friends/relatives and snark on things.
amazon - i order a bunch of things from them and it would incovienent but livable.
microsoft - i would have to quit my job since i’m a windows sys admin
alphabet - i have google fiber, all other alphabet services i can live without.
apple - i much prefer working with/on macs and ios. i’ll keep these.
most google services i already use something else. duckduckgo for search, apple maps for gps. fastmail for mail on my own domain. but man, google fiber is hard to live without. i’d have to move to one of the cities with gigabit from another company.
I answered based on “how much of a problem would it cause if this company went away” but I see now that the question was universally interpreted as “how much of your identity is based on your hatred for this company which doesn’t care about that?”
Facebook is totally disposable; almost no one’s life would be really different if it disappeared right now.
Amazon is a huge retailer, but there are alternatives to almost everything it does. (Though the disappearance of EC2 would be very disruptive)
Google Search could be directly replaced with Bing (given a couple of months for them to build out their server farms). The main losses would be GMail and YouTube, though again there are alternatives.
Apple is at either #4 or #2, depending on whether you use a Mac / iPhone or not.
Microsoft is the least dispensable by a country mile. Without Windows and its by-blows, almost all businesses and government departments would simply cease to function. Banks wouldn’t be able to dispense cash, and stores wouldn’t be able to take it. Perhaps not many safety-critical systems would be directly affected, but those whose life-support machines did fail would be the lucky ones, as they’d be spared the horror of surviving.
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Hmm… Nope. Can’t say I ever have.
Duck Duck Go works just as well and it doesn’t track you.
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Facebook – don’t use it, and very unlikely to start.
Apple – most people choose to either go Apple or M$. I went M$.
Amazon – great product selection, but their shipping is becoming less and less practical for me. About the only thing I’d miss is my cat food subscribe and save. Kindle would also be annoying to port to another platform.
M$ and Alphabet tie for hardest to abandon. All my digital stuff is tied up in PCs, and I use Google quite frequently at work.
Depends. If it’s after the day like I had yesterday, I’d probably grab the gun and stare insanely into the eyes of the confused executioner like Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon. “Just one?! Burn them all!!!”
Get a Thinkpad, put ubuntu on it, and you are good to go.
I, too, must cast my lot with the Gracchian Order.
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