
Which Tech Giant Would You Drop? - Deinos
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/10/technology/Ranking-Apple-Amazon-Facebook-Microsoft-Google.html
======
CM30
As someone who doesn't particularly like social networking sites, and
especially dislikes Facebook compared to other social networks... I'd drop
Facebook first. Heck, I only joined because I had to in order to add a page
for a business I was working with.

Apple I could drop pretty easily too. An iPhone is nice, but it's not exactly
the be all and end all. Any old Android phone could work well too.

Amazon... personally I'd be able to drop it easily, though most people would
have more trouble there. That's because nowadays the products I mostly buy
from there are computer accessories and games, and the latter is under serious
competition from the likes of Steam, various digital download stores on
consoles and even the companies themselves selling boxed versions.

Still can't imagine how people buy food on these sites. I mean, do you often
like to wait for your food to be delivered? The supermarkets here are both
pretty cheap and within walking distance.

Microsoft would be tough, simply because Microsoft Office is really important
to me, and I'm really used to Windows at this point.

Google is arguably the toughest one to drop. Why? Mix of services needed (it's
damn hard to promote a website about certain subjects without YouTube
nowadays, and Gmail is very convenient) and the fact their alternatives are
just nowhere near as good for a search engine. Which is depressing given how
far downhill Google's own search results have gone recently...

But yeah, interesting to see the stats there.

~~~
gutnor
> I mean, do you often like to wait for your food to be delivered?

As a foreigner, Amazon ( and others ) offers food that is simply not
accessible in the local supermarket.

All the food that requires a trip to a larger supermarket or a specific shop ?

For example, my last buy was some sort of pasta that is difficult to find in
London. I'm 100% certain I could find it in some Italian shop. I'm 80% certain
at least 1 of the major supermarket stock at their largest store. To find out,
I would need to explore the city. I don't want that pasta enough to dedicate a
whole week-end to search for it. Alternatively, I can use internet and the
first results are generally a shop that offers delivery. Again I don't want to
dedicate a significant part of my we to go to that shop to buy 4 GBP worth of
pasta.

------
lpolovets
I'm surprised that only 10% of people would drop Apple first. I would have
guessed that way more than 10% of people don't own a single Apple product. I
wonder if maybe the NYT's readership is biased toward Apple owners?

(My ranking: I'd drop Apple and MSFT easily since I don't use anything by
either company. FB would be easy to drop but I do use it and would miss it a
little. Amazon and Google would be significantly more work to let go of.)

~~~
brogrammernot
Between iTunes and iPhones they have a massive market share.

~~~
lpolovets
Agree, but do you think it's 90% market share? I'd guess it's 20%-40% (in the
US). That's just my gut feeling though, and not based on data.

Edit: Found some data. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/232790/forecast-
of-apple...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/232790/forecast-of-apple-
users-in-the-us/) Suggests 30% of Americans have an iPhone. Not sure what
iTunes usage is like.

~~~
threeseed
Again. You're continuing to draw conclusions from poor source data.

A New York Times poll that possibly has only been posted here is always going
to skew more towards Apple users who are typically more affluent and higher
educated.

------
jfaucett
This was interesting. It made me think about which services each provider has
that I personally would really miss if they were to suddenly dissappear
tomorrow, and the only one that would have a big negative effect would be
google maps.

I don't use facebook at all. I can count the things I've ordered on amazon (in
all 30+ years of my life) on one hand. I don't use microsoft or apple products
unless I'm forced to because of some work related project. And this isn't even
out of any crazy principles or anything. I simply like linux distros better
than apple/msft. I use an android phone but mainly just the phone
functionality personally (i.e. like a good ol nokia + gmaps).

Funny, I would of thought it would have effected me personally a lot more,
especially me being a software developer and all. But honestly it would make
my life a lot easier, then cross-platform would be just linux :)

------
Yetanfou
1: Facebook, no question there. I never had an account, nor do I ever plan on
getting one. This is one company I'd like to be rid of, please.

2: Amazon, there's plenty of other options and - at least in Europe - I don't
see any specific advantage to Amazon anyway.

3: Apple, overpriced lifestyle is not my style and I don't particularly like
their attitude in many ways, nor do I like the idea of them having enough cash
to buy a small country. It is not so much that I begrudge them their success
but that I wonder what that power will eventually be used for.

4: Microsoft, using Linux since 1992, OS/2 before that, another company I
won't miss having around. Having said that, as long as Apple is around I'd
like to keep Microsoft alive as well, just like I wanted Apple to be there to
make sure Microsoft did not gain a 100% stranglehold on mainstream personal
computing.

5: Alphabet - or should I just say Google. I use some of their products in
'customised' form, Android without Google-proprietary stuff, the search engine
without persistent cookies. I don't have a Google account though so I'm not
tied to them by more than a search setting in a browser (Seamonkey, Firefox,
Chromium, ...). There are other search engines, there are other mobile
operating systems.

~~~
midnitewarrior
Don't forget that Microsoft was a top Linux code contributor for awhile, and
that OS/2 was a partnership between IBM and Microsoft.

Microsoft is everywhere.

------
northwest65
Definitely Amazon. As a customer from New Zealand, their online shopping site
is almost impossible to purchase from (any item I look at does not ship here),
and some of their practices are so misleading as to be illegal in my country
('one click' buy X at price $Y, which when billed then includes another $Z for
freight).

Never again.

~~~
therealmarv
Why blame a shop which is not really operating in or near your country? It's
also not NZ law they need to follow. But I would also stay away from one buy
IMHO... you can cancel always (if no digital goods) and you are fast enough.

~~~
northwest65
Because all of my other favourite shopping sites (specifically AliExpress)
that don't operate in or near my country are able to communicate what I can
and can't buy, and clearly show me the shipping price on the product page
(i.e. no other click through, or worse, not telling me I can't buy it _till
the bloody checkout screen_ ) just fine.

Actually whilst I'm having a bitch about the abysmal user experience on
Amazon, here's another: Don't let me fill my cart with things I can't buy
(after I already selected my shipping address before even started to add
items), and then tell me hey this item can't be shipped to your location,
which I then remove, only to be told hey this item also can't be shipped to
your location. Repeat for all the items. Just tell me _all_ the god damn items
that can't be shipped at once, or shit how about this for a trip... maybe
don't let me add them in the first place. /rant

~~~
therealmarv
Well I agree that the Amazon shipping information for international orders is
not very clear. At least you can ship some things internationally... many
other shops refuse to ship internationally altogether

------
closeparen
I ranked in order of how easy it would be to get equivalent services
elsewhere.

Amazon is a particularly good ecommerce site, but by no means alone in its
class, and there are plenty of IaaS providers. (Getting locked in to AWS
specific products is a bad idea anyway).

Microsoft products already have superior competitors on the marketplace.
Retooling and retraining the entire business IT world will cost something, but
it needs to happen anyway.

People have been trying to replace Facebook since it started; some new entrant
will supplant it overnight.

No one is really competing with Apple on quality. I think it would take a long
time for someone to replace its offerings with equivalently polished products,
if it ever even happens (the demand for cheap stuff might be so strong that
Apple is only viable because of brand inertia). I'd miss it.

Alphabet is unmatched in search, drive, email, and Bell Labs-style R&D
moonshots. I doubt it's repeatable outside of the specific time and place from
which it emerged.

~~~
falcolas
> No one is really competing with Apple on quality.

I would dare say that Microsoft is encroaching on this slowly but surely.
Between the Surface, Surface book, the upcoming niche desktop PC, and air-
esque laptop, they are steadily coming up with compelling offerings that are
eating into Apple's space.

Google's Pixel devices are also squeezing Apple, though mostly in the mobile
market.

------
nitemice
I don't want to 'drop' Google, but I distrust them enough to want a escape
plan, should things get bad. Thing is, they provide so much stuff, I don't
know how I could possible ever migrate away.

I don't use any Apple stuff, except vary rarely iTunes for music purchases,
because I've still got credit there from ~5yrs ago.

Amazon have little to no presence in Australia currently, but that could
change.

I'd love to get away from Facebook, but as previously discussed[1], my nooby
friends are the main thing holding me back.

Microsoft seem to have mostly picked up their game in recent years, so I have
no problem with sticking with them. That said, I refused to fully integrate
like I have with Google (mail, calendar, etc.), because their products just
don't seem to work as well.

[1]([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14217083](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14217083))

~~~
ionised
> Thing is, they provide so much stuff, I don't know how I could possible ever
> migrate away.

It's actually very easy, and once you do you'll realise Google's significance
in your life is seriously overestimated.

------
ruytlm
5\. Microsoft. Could arguably live without Windows and Office (via either OSX
or Linux), but at present it underpins all that I do on a computer.

4\. Alphabet. Alphabet/Google products are the next layer I use on top of MS
products, therefore are the next hardest to remove.

3\. Facebook. The next layer again; MS and Alphabet provide general case
tools, FB is a particular implementation on top of those, so it would go
before either of the above two.

2\. Amazon. No Amazon in Australia anyway, no big loss.

1\. Apple. Only Apple product/service I use is a keyboard. Happy to see it go.

------
StavrosK
Weird, I don't really use any of those companies. I switched away from Google
(although I guess I still use Android and Maps, so not entirely), I don't own
anything Apple makes, I don't buy things or rent services from Amazon, and I
haven't used anything Microsoft in years.

I sometimes use Facebook to talk to non-close friends, although I do use
Whatsapp daily, so I guess that counts too.

All in all, I don't think it's impossible to escape at least one of them.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_Weird, I don 't really use any of those companies_

Except apparently, Google, Facebook and Microsoft [1]. If you have any apps
installed then probably AWS also indirectly or maybe even fulfillment that you
don't know is coming from one of their FCs

That's not even mentioning that you're tracked across the world by them even
if you don't go there directly.

I think the only person that doesn't use any of those and is still on the
internet directly is RMS [2]

The idea that you can actually live in modern society and not touch one of the
big 5 is misguided.

[1][https://duck.co/forum/thread/4350/did-you-know-that-
duckduck...](https://duck.co/forum/thread/4350/did-you-know-that-duckduckgo-
bing)

[2][https://stallman.org/stallman-
computing.html](https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html)

~~~
fooey
Yeah, article is interesting if you only look at end user products and
services, but there's practically no internet without the server
infrastructures provided by Amazon, Google and MS.

------
tbabb
\- Facebook I think does more harm to the world on the whole (basically a
chain-letter conveyor belt for a majority of the public), but slight good to
me personally (able to keep in touch with people that would otherwise have
disappeared from my life), so it was a toss-up of interpretation whether to
dump it first or second.

\- Killing MSFT would do a lot of short-term economic damage, but the new
innovation that happens to fill its place would probably be an easy net boon.
Linux would be a fast replacement, and it would probably force that ecosystem
to blossom. As someone who doesn't use any MSFT products (I have no need for
them), I wouldn't personally suffer at all.

\- Amazon is the center of online commerce, but I think it's already a fat,
complacent company. Their infrastructure is famously good, but the purchasing
experience is crap. Finding what you want is much harder than it should be for
an online experience, and the recommendations are laughably bad. What takes
its place would necessarily be much better.

\- Apple's products are still a force of pressure on the market to innovate,
though I suspect that will not be true for much longer. Their latest products
are less clearly better than the competition, and they've made some bizarre
design blunders. My next phone/laptop will likely _not_ be Apple, so once
their innovation dries up, seeing them disappear probably wouldn't make much
of a difference in my life.

\- Google and Gmail are still unparalleled. One could imagine something better
than Gmail, but Google search is so core and effortless it's hard to picture
what an improvement would look like. Deleting google would break the internet.

~~~
Nition
> Finding what you want is much harder than it should be for an online
> experience

I can't believe that after all these years and all the engineers they must
have, sorting a category by top rated still puts an item with one review and 5
stars above a product with 10,000 reviews and an average of 4.9 stars.

~~~
premrajnarkhede
OMG! so true! I have been going with popularity as sorting parameter and
screening low rated products myself

------
JoshMnem
> Could you ditch them?

Yes, of course. All of them. I was alive before those companies existed, and
life was more pleasant then in many ways. I already use Linux.

Google Search is a difficult one to replace in this line of work.

Google Maps is especially useful for people who tend to get lost, but I think
it's also bad for people's brains, because it takes cognitive load off of the
brain's navigation system, which is required for many cognitive tasks,
including memory.* In any case, there would be other mapping companies to fill
the space.

* It still needs more research, but this is interesting: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/677048.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/677048.stm)

------
Entangled
Dropped microsoft fifteen years ago and never looked back. Dropped facebook
seven years ago. Google is still useful but got bitten in my pockets by
adsense so they are in my watch list. Mozilla, Amazon, Apple in high esteem
but could be more user friendly and more innovative in their fields. Big media
and big telcos, I don't care. Twitter, snapchat, instagram, never used them,
don't care about social fads.

What else?

------
jcranmer
For me, the hard choice was whether to drop Facebook or Apple first, and then
whether to drop Microsoft or Google last. I don't really use either Facebook
or Apple (or Amazon either, I guess, but Amazon ended up in the "no opinion"
category more than anything else)--I've not looked at Facebook in months, and
I've not posted anything in years, and the newest Apple product I own is well
over a decade old.

Ultimately, I'd drop Facebook first largely because I see Apple as still
providing some value-add, whereas it's hard to see any value-add from
Facebook. I ultimately dropped Microsoft last because they're the only ones
who have made decent office productivity software (I say this having used both
Corel's stuff long ago and LibreOffice for several years).

For all of the visualization stuff that the NYT does, I'm surprised that the
visualization here is pretty sucky. Only bar graphs of the top and bottom
choices? Really? That's the most you could come up with?

------
TheAceOfHearts
First drop for me is easily Microsoft. I have a gaming PC, and I keep it
booted in Ubuntu unless a game requires Windows. I'm pretty sure I could boot
into Windows less often if I used WINE, but I don't currently wanna deal with
that hassle. The only other tools from Microsoft that I follow are TypeScript
and Visual Studio Code, but I'm happily using Flow and WebStorm.

Second drop would definitely be Facebook. I feel like my Facebook feed is
largely full of shitty memes. It'd be annoying to lose Messenger, but most of
the contacts I regularly speak with are available through other means of
communication. If I were closing my account I'd probably message a bunch of
people to make sure I have their alternative contact info. I don't think I'd
be able to easily drop React and Flow. Migrating away from their ecosystem
would be incredibly challenging for me.

I can't drop Amazon, Apple, or Google.

------
dryajov
I think this is an unconstructive question. We better ask ourselfs what can we
replace them with that is fundamentally better?

~~~
ptr_void
I think, people doesn't necessarily hate the product, they hate the business
model.

However, I don't have any realistic replacement business model to offer.

~~~
dryajov
I think some of the fundamental shortcomings could and will be replaced/fixed
by decentralization/distribution which is actively being worked on with
projects like ipfs and ethereum.

------
nstart
Fascinating to see that people choose to drop fb first in most cases. I'm
wondering how many are considering WhatsApp as part of fb. In my case I could
drop fb and Instagram tomorrow. WhatsApp? That'd be really really really hard
to just drop out of touch with family or force them to install something else.

~~~
what_ever
Pretty easy to just switch to Telegram. There are tons of messaging apps that
use phone number as identity. Signal, WeChat (I think?), Allo, Hike to name a
few.

------
blfr
I have never really used Apple or Facebook much, dropped Microsoft years ago,
loss of support for my Kindle would be at most a minor inconvenience but
Google? Crippling.

I use G Suite both privately and at work, basically run my life via
Calendar/Maps/Keep, and get a nervous twitch in my left eye just at the
thought of what a massive hassle it would be to first switch, and very likely
second -- maintain the alternative.

That's even before I consider that there would be no Google to turn to when
configuring that alternative, that my phone would essentially become a Nokia
E52 with a larger screen (no Google Apps, no Uber without Google Maps, not
even the local bus/directions app would work, not sure about Signal), and I
that would need to dig up a ton of data from a cold, cold storage.

On a lighter note, NYT is now writing HN-tailored clickbait. We captured the
zeitgeist.

------
flukus
From the perspective of what the impact would be if these companies disappear:

Apple would be the easiest to lose. They mostly just design high end consumer
products that we don't particularly need and the gap could be filled by
others. Foxconn would have to find another design studio to outsource to.

Hardest would be MS. The impact wouldn't be immediate but there would be a
made scramble to replace all sorts of business software (internal and
external) to other platforms. There would also be some massive hardware
compatibility issues to deal with while doing so. I'd quit my job and make
bank "porting" c# projects to mono, maybe even do some win32 to wine work.

Of course that depends on how much you use the online services of any of the
companies too. The only impact on me would be the loss of gmail, but I'd get
over it pretty quick.

------
gremlinsinc
My order was :

1\. FB (because it doesn't serve any really important meaningful purpose... I
much prefer reddit),

2\. Apple: Because I hate apple products and their closed walled gardens when
it comes to building apps and things (I'm android/linux desktop user).

3\. MS: DOn't much use any of their products anymore, but did for a long time,
and if I were to leave linux I'd probably go back to windows, since I like
custom built computers.

4\. Amazon: Love amazon, great deals - only place I shop, but if they didn't
exist I'd probably find somewhere else using google.

5\. Alphabet: Self-driving cars, android, youtube, gmail, search (I've tried
bing, etc... but no other search provider gives the quality of results -- esp
for coding questions), and they're even my isp: Google FIBER... so yeah this
one would be a hard one to sever for me.

~~~
BigJono
I'm interested how reddit of all things acts as a replacement for Facebook.

What do you use for IMing, group chats, organising events and sharing jokes
(memes?) between friends? I'd imagine those are the main use cases of FB for
most people. Nobody I know cares in the slightest about the news feed, it's
just private groups and messenger.

~~~
gremlinsinc
Iming --I use hangouts, mostly I only chat w/ wife.. Group chats--Slack, and
only my dev team. Events: EventBright, or Meetup.com.. I only read the
newsfeed on FB, don't use it for much else...I did just recently start using
FB Messenger as my sms, and switch to that for some IM'ing but there's a
million different IM apps so not like they couldn't be replaced easily enough.

------
Roritharr
Facebook

~~~
flareback
agreed.

~~~
ianai
Facebook, to me, is the worst to use. It's a mental hazard.

------
jacques_chester
> _Which Tech Giant Would You Drop?_

I guess Google, since they're indirectly the most responsible for clickbait
headlines.

------
ionised
I chose Facebook as my number 1 and Alphabet as my number 2.

He then goes on to rant about how amazing and utterly irreplaceable and
amazing Google is and how difficult my life must be not using Google services.

The contrary is true. It's very easy not to use Google services and they are
very replaceable.

~~~
falcolas
> how amazing and utterly irreplaceable and amazing Google is

> It's very easy not to use Google services

Both can be true. Which is more true for you depends on how much of the
ecosystem you (and your peers) use. For example, the previous startup I worked
for used Google services quite extensively. Chat, hangouts, documents,
spreadsheets, drive, email, calendar, even YouTube... the cost of moving off
would have been quite significant, for very little benefit.

The company before that didn't use Google at all, and instead used IRC,
NFS/SMB servers, and private MX servers. They functioned fine, though many of
the non-tech users were beginning to grumbling about the benefits of moving to
Google (because that was what they were familiar with).

There's a bit of a sunk cost fallacy which always comes up when talking about
moving off Google, but that doesn't mean the cost of replacing everything
Google provides is anywhere near zero - especially when it comes to
convenience.

In a way, Google's offerings have become the new Microsoft Office suite - used
not because they're the best at any one thing, but because of all the value
provided by everything together, and the familiarity of incoming users with
that suite.

------
big_spammer
I dropped all except Amazon, because books are cheaper there. The cockroach is
Amazon.

Google was surprisingly easy to drop. I use DuckDuckGo and quit GMail.

Microsoft I dropped more than a decade ago.

I never used Facebook.

I half-dropped Apple by switching away from Mac OS X, but I still own in
iPhone that I'll drop when it breaks.

------
thablackbull
In order of what I could easily/already drop:

Facebook: Never had Facebook

Apple: Don't use any Apple products

Alphabet (Google): 90%+ searches are now through DuckDuckGo for me

Amazon: Needed as online shopping often through Amazon, and I still buy a lot
of books through them

Microsoft: Must have, my life is intimately tied to Excel

------
Spooky23
The easiest to drop for me would be Facebook and Amazon.

I enjoy Apple and Google. products and don't see a need to drop.

Microsoft doesn't have a big impact on my personal life anymore. It wouldn't
be feasible to remove them fro, my personal life, however.

------
BadassFractal
I stopped using Facebook and Twitter for a few months. Once the initial pains
of withdrawal subsided, I couldn't even remember that was something I wanted
to check. Don't need either one of them.

------
mrdodge
I haven't used anything Microsoft in 5 years.

~~~
therealmarv
I tried to achieve the same. But still need to use Skype for some work
contacts. And for first time in many years I felt in love with a MS product:
VSCode (well it is coded by a very talented sub branch from MS in
Switzerland).

So nowadays I'm coding Linux production software on a Mac with a Microsoft
editor ;)

~~~
ianai
I bought a win7 laptop after owning nothing MS related for a decade just to
"freshen up".

------
dmourati
Microsoft and Facebook are the obvious easy ones for me. The next three are
far more interesting as I use each on a daily basis.

------
supercoder
Easy, Amazon. They don't make anything.

~~~
santaclaus
They make Alexa voice tubes and kindles and tv boxes and tv shows. (I'm
probably missing a few things)

~~~
benchaney
They also do distribution. Granted that isn't something they "make", but it is
still a legitimate service.

------
johan_larson
Facebook. I don't use them. Never did.

------
cdransf
Facebook.

------
grandalf
warning: paywall

