https://unixdigest.com/articles/this-is-how-you-keep-your-dignity-and-not-sell-your-soul.html

Then again, I kind of guessed that long time ago...

Google parent company Alphabet lost over $70 billion in market value, with stock prices falling as much as 4.4 percent on Monday following the pause on Google Gemini’s AI image creator and posts surfaced of Gemini’s responses in the chat feature.

According to Bloomberg, Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes warned in a research note that problems that have arisen with Gemini may fuel the perception that Google is “an unreliable source for AI,” as many companies try to launch their own AI platforms.

“We have been arguing that Search behavior is about to change – with new AI-infused features,” said Reitzes. “This ‘once in a generation’ change by itself creates opportunities for competitors, but even more if a meaningful portion of users grow concerned about Google’s hallucinations and bias.”

Images generated by the feature included a female pope, a black George Washington, and other racially diverse recreations of historic figures.

The best option honestly, for using flash, would be to make an open source version of it and make it work without needing adobe's second to last version.

Maybe if someone made an open source replacement it could be vastly less vulnerable to security issues when used with the open source version.

I miss Flash. So many great videos. So many great games. Browsers and Adobe should re-enable it for those of us who are willing to take the risks.

There are browsers out there you can still use Flash on. Also, you would need to use the next-to-last version of Flash, as the last version is "self-destructing."

Necro-posting is a bit silly. Especially since HoaS has long since left the building . . .

/me yawns . . .

I find it amusing, as I said elsewhere, its like being a ghostwriter.

As for the necro-posting, I find that even more funny due to how absurd doing so is.

I miss Flash.

Out there are quite a few alternatives to run legacy swf files on modern OS.

adobe flash was proprietary anyhow and the web wasn't flooded enough to where it couldn't be dealt with if I had to guess...

I miss Flash. So many great videos. So many great games. Browsers and Adobe should re-enable it for those of us who are willing to take the risks.

So far, mankind has not come up with anything more effective than a free market.
If you don't like Google, Facebook, etc., create an alternative.

Google is only as powerful as we allow it to be. I already don't use it for anything, so problem solved.

Facebook is a different story. FB benefits from a phenomenon that I call interopoly, a portmanteau of "interoperability" and "monopoly". It's a difficult concept to define but easy to describe; basically, it's any platform, language, standard, format, etc. where the advantages of using the same thing as everyone else outweigh the advantages of using whatever is actually best. We see examples in the VHS vs. betamax format war, the inability of DVORAK keyboards to displace QWERTY, and of course, Microsoft's domination of the operating system market. In Facebook's case, lots of better social networks exist, including Mewe and Diaspora... but I rarely use them because there's nobody to talk to! If I want to talk to anyone, I have to be where the people are, and that's Facebook.

It's one of those weird edge cases where free markets don't work quite as well as they usually do. When a particular interopoly isn't privately owned, then this isn't too bad. VHS, for example, was an "open format". But when an interopoly is owned by one company, and they use that power to extract unearned money from the economy while constantly lowering the quality of their product or service, as Facebook does, then it's time for the government to step in and start beating someone with a stick. In the specific case of Microsoft, their monopoly on Windows-compatible OSes is propped up by patent and copyright laws, so that problem can be solved by less government involvement in the economy.

It was on the first page of the subforum. I didn't look at the dates. *shrug*

/me yawns . . .

@OP: I find your links to far-right propaganda websites disturbing.

Fox Business isn't far-right. It's a room in the Fox News building where they put all the libertarians (Kat Timpf, John Stossel, Kennedy etc.) so they don't bother the actual far-righters with silly things like facts and logic.

We are talking about Google here so... yeah.

The Big 3, Google, Apple and Microsoft all can suck it. These days, I am more inclined to say it to  Google and Microsoft though.

Apple is only a problem for people willing to use their services and more than that, their hardware.

So... the other two really need a giant nerf. Or better yet, they should be deleted from this world.

All capitalist surveillance companies need to die

And,

From a mailing list:

1. Which of the following reasons did Judge Gonzalez Rogers use to justify her decision deny Google’s request for a summary judgement in its Incognito mode case?

A. Google never explicitly told its users it still collects data in Incognito mode

B. Google can “uniquely identify a user with a high probability of success” even if they use Incognito mode

C. Google implied that it would not collect users’ data while they browsed privately

D. All of the above

Answer: D

such as the "crimeflare network" they have...

https://notabug.org/dCF/deCloudflare

#crimeflare is one of the hashtags on that notabug.org page.

Its beyond appropriate that whoever made that notabug page, calls it crimeflare lol.

But yeah, google needs someone to cut their lucrative business by 10x at least. Big corporations hate competition. FACT!

So... yeah.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG?p= … c=fin-srch

"By Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON, Sept 14 (Reuters) - The Justice Department pressed its argument on Thursday that Google sought to strike agreements with mobile carriers to win powerful default positions on smartphones to dominate search in an antitrust trial that could change the future of the internet.

The government wrapped up questioning of Antonio Rangel, who teaches behavioral biology at the California Institute of Technology on Thursday morning. Rangel discussed how consumers were likely to stick with browsers on computers and mobile phones that were pre-installed as the default application.

The government says the Alphabet unit paid $10 billion annually to wireless companies like AT&T, device makers like Apple and browser makers like Mozilla to be the default search engine on devices to fend off rivals and keep its search engine market share near 90%.

John Schmidtlein, a lawyer for Google, during cross-examination of Rangel, pointed out that a significant number of user search queries went to Google even when another search engine was the default.

A major part of Google's defense is that the government is wrong to say that Google broke the law to hold onto its massive market share because its search engine is wildly popular because of its quality..."

lol

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-us-all … 49596.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/2 … e-00079229

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/pressco … ip_23_3207

"The European Commission has informed Google of its preliminary view that the company breached EU antitrust rules by distorting competition in the advertising technology industry (‘adtech'). The Commission takes issue with Google favouring its own online display advertising technology services to the detriment of competing providers of advertising technology services, advertisers and online publishers.

Google is a US multinational technology company. Google's flagship service is its search engine Google Search. Google also operates other popular services, such as the video streaming platform YouTube or the mobile operating system Android. Google's main source of revenue is online advertising: (i) it sells advertising space on its own websites and apps; and (ii) it intermediates between advertisers that want to place their ads online and publishers (i.e. third-party websites and apps) that can supply such space.

Advertisers and publishers rely on the adtech industry's digital tools for the placement of real time ads not linked to a search query, such as banner ads in websites of newspapers (‘display ads'). In particular, the adtech industry provides three digital tools: (i) publisher ad servers used by publishers to manage the advertising space on their websites and apps; (ii) ad buying tools used by advertisers to manage their automated advertising campaigns; and (iii) ad exchanges where publishers and advertisers meet in real time, typically via auctions, to buy and sell display adds."

any defense of google aka ALphabet Inc. will be interpreted as nepotism or a form of stockholm syndrome

https://www.reuters.com/legal/nine-more … 023-04-17/

https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-set … %EF%BF%BC/

"“Today’s complaint alleges that Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful conduct to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “No matter the industry and no matter the company, the Justice Department will vigorously enforce our antitrust laws to protect consumers, safeguard competition, and ensure economic fairness and opportunity for all.”"

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice- … chnologies