The company’s team clarified that their terms prohibit third-party apps from disabling ads, as it denies creators their due reward for viewership. Although the announcement did not specify any app by name, it’s plausible to presume that third-party YouTube apps such as NewPipe, YouTube ReVanced, Piped, and others might be implicated.
Realistically Google Search and Google Maps don’t provide anything unique that isn’t provided by competitors, although a) they may provide a superior experience, and b) the competitors are not necessarily much more palatable (that is, Bing Search and Bing Maps are hardly a great ethical improvement).
YouTube is probably the only Google service where this is a genuine monopoly of sorts. That is, content that is on YouTube is not generally available on other platforms, and if you want to watch that content you have to watch it on YouTube. We might all live for the day when all content creators are dual-hosting in PeerTube or the like too, but we’re a long long way from that right now.
Although I write that as someone who only very rarely actually uses YouTube, because largely the content isn’t to my interest. Other than my local football club’s channel, I can’t think of anything on there that I actually seek out.
They do provide sth unique, because open source/privacy friendly alternatives are not supporting the same features to a full extent in one solution with a simple UX. And even Bing, as you mentioned and other competitors, fall short. I’m using Startpage (based on Google) and OSM most of the times and I’m happy with it, but sometimes I gotta check restaurant ratings or satellite view etc. Also route planning is way more convenient on gmaps even if I don’t use it. There’s probably more as well, which I’m not aware of.
Yes exactly, YouTube is the only google service I use almost everyday (besides Startpage)… but I wouldn’t know what to do without it.
Fair enough :)
Ratings on Google maps are less informative than having no information. An absolute dumpster fire with no value in any context.
Agree to disagree. Was really helpful in Vietnam e.g., and I also don’t have problems with it in Germany.