I agree with the premise of the article. It really bothered me when I realised I couldn't delete my business listing Google Maps, only set it to "permanently closed". And my bank, my countries' largest, one year ago dropped NFC in favour of Google Pay. Not to mention the Google popups that seem to appear on what seems every website (how did the manage this?!).
Personally I've moved to Zoho for mail and use Ubuntu with a rsync/zfs based backup solution. I'm not logged in to Google but I do use Google Search. On my phone I use a separate Google account specially for the phone, and I use F Droid, except for my bank, which only distributes their app through Google Play.
Why do you think the EU is trying to bully (ineffectively) US tech companies? I don't think bullying US companies is the solution. More embracing of Linux would help a lot. Banks need to behave; making Google Play store a requirement for banking should not be allowed by the authorities, since banks play a special role. Then there is search and maps. Something should be done about that as well. Maybe something like an EU-based perplexity/anthropic competitor would be great.
> And my bank, my countries' largest, one year ago dropped NFC in favour of Google Pay.
Dutch banks used to have a great system for contactless payment through your banking app. Worked perfectly. Last year, it seems they all abandoned it in favour of Google Wallet. I don't understand this move. Why outsource this to US tech giants when we had a perfect system already in place?
I think regulation that requires banks to keep their payment infrastructure in the EU and out of the hands of advertising companies would be a really good idea.
> making Google Play store a requirement for banking should not be allowed by the authorities
How would banks distribute their apps and make sure they are up to date then? F-Droid only accepts open-source software.
> Maybe something like an EU-based perplexity/anthropic competitor would be great.
Maybe it would be even better to have a EU-based app store that must be pre-installed on every Android/iOS/iPadOS device that is sold in the EU, so as to break the monopoly of Google and Apple in the app distribution.
Personally I've moved to Zoho for mail and use Ubuntu with a rsync/zfs based backup solution. I'm not logged in to Google but I do use Google Search. On my phone I use a separate Google account specially for the phone, and I use F Droid, except for my bank, which only distributes their app through Google Play.
Why do you think the EU is trying to bully (ineffectively) US tech companies? I don't think bullying US companies is the solution. More embracing of Linux would help a lot. Banks need to behave; making Google Play store a requirement for banking should not be allowed by the authorities, since banks play a special role. Then there is search and maps. Something should be done about that as well. Maybe something like an EU-based perplexity/anthropic competitor would be great.