Breaking Away From Google
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 18 September 2019
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Host Aaron Mak discusses with journalist Nithin Coca his attempt to abstain from using any Google products in his daily life. They discuss why he did it, the useful alternatives he found for specific apps, the quirks of using different tools abroad, and the surprising benefits he found in starting over. They also speculate on whether or not a normal consumer could sustainably do the same thing, and what that means for the state of the industry.
After the interview, host Aaron Mak joins co-host Shannon Palus for this week’s edition of “Don’t Close My Tabs.” Podcast production by Justin D. Wright.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to If Then, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future. |
| 0:04.9 | I'm Aaron Mack. |
| 0:12.0 | Hey, everyone, welcome to If Then. |
| 0:14.3 | We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense, |
| 0:16.5 | a partnership between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America. |
| 0:22.2 | We are recording this on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 17th. On today's show, we'll be talking to Nithin Koka, |
| 0:27.3 | a journalist who has abstained from using any Google products for over a year. We'll discuss |
| 0:32.4 | why he did it and what alternatives he used, and whether he thinks that other people can |
| 0:36.8 | easily do this as well. |
| 0:38.6 | I'll also ask for his thoughts on how this experiment has formed his thinking about antitrust in big tech. |
| 0:44.1 | After the interview, my colleague Shannon Paulus will join me for Don't Close My Tabs, |
| 0:48.1 | where we talk about the best things we saw on the web this week. |
| 0:51.0 | That's all coming up on If Then. |
| 1:03.3 | It's hard to imagine life without Google. The company, whose parent alphabet is the fourth largest tech company in the world, seems to be involved in everything we do on the internet. |
| 1:07.5 | More than 90% of web searches are conducted through Google. And think about |
| 1:10.9 | Gmail, GCal, docs, drive, hangouts, Chrome, Maps, Android, YouTube. These services are so |
| 1:17.4 | popular and intertwined that it might seem impossible to stop using Google products altogether. |
| 1:22.2 | But journalist Nithin Koka did just that. For more than a year, he's abstained from using |
| 1:26.3 | anything made by Google to figure out |
| 1:27.8 | just how hard it is to live outside the company's bubble. Nithin chronicled his journey in two |
| 1:32.6 | medium articles. He writes about how it took him six months to find alternative services |
| 1:36.7 | and finally close his Gmail account, and about the sacrifices and surprising benefits of freeing yourself |
... |
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