Slashdot Asks: Which Tech Giant You Can't Live Without?

In this week's column of NYTimes, Farhad Manjoo writes about the five largest technology companies in the world: Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet, the parent company of Google. As he notes, these companies have become the most powerful firms of any kind, essentially inescapable for any consumer or business that wants to participate in the modern world. This brings us to two questions:
1. Of the five aforementioned companies, tell us one whose services you don't need for work and for personal use. (In short, the company that doesn't matter to you.) Here's a poll where you can cast your vote.
2. On the same note, which company's services and products you can't ditch (for work / personal use)?

Comments

None of them.

[the_skywise]

I can get my PC from intel, my monitor from Samsung, my OS via Linux and internet through some sort of fascist company.

I don't need those 5 at all.

Re:None of them.

[someone1234]

You should add google.* to your banned host list, and see how far you get on the "internet" :D

Re:None of them.

[Maritz]

This whole thread will be a fanboy shit-slinging-fest.

Re:None of them.

[gfxguy]

But you're looking at it through historical context - we've lived without internet, without cellphones, even without cable TV, and managed to actually survive! But if you're looking at it in the context of today, you've likely started relying heavily on one or more of these companies and it would likely be extremely inconvenient, if not impossible to do your job, without one or several of them.

I'll agree that facebook is the most useless one there, and if facebook disappeared from the face of the planet, the lives of hundreds of millions of users worldwide would actually likely improve.

I've come to rely on google for a lot of things. Certainly searching the internet is one of them, but gmail, google voice, sharing calendars and documents with my family has been extremely useful. So, on a personal level, losing Google would hurt the most - although I'd manage.

As far as work goes, we work with proprietary software (and I'm not complaining, as it includes great API access for us programmers); it only runs on Windows. I would love to see a port somewhere else, but that's not likely. We also rely a lot on Microsoft's cloud services and office products to share things (the way I do in my personal life with Google). If MS were suddenly to cease to exist, we'd switch to products on Linux (we've evaluated them, and they just weren't ready for prime-time yet, but we'd learn to live with them if they were the only option).

I also use Amazon a lot - I have prime, and I've never looked back. I'll take free two day shipping over wasting gas, causing extra pollution, adding to the traffic problem, and spending a couple of hours going to the local big box store and choosing something from a much more limited selection. I don't care about sales tax. I'd be paying that locally anyway. Prime videos and music are a nice added bonus.

So there's none of these companies I couldn't live without, but I don't think that's really the question. We use the word "need" very loosely these days, and it depends on context. I don't "need" internet service at home... but I do "need" internet service at home if I want to work remotely. But I don't "need" to work remotely, it's just a perk. I don't "need" any of these companies. I "need" them to do some specific things that I don't really "need" to do.

And slashdot actually has polls, so WTF would someone go offsite to take this survey? Unless, of course, you like being the product. Wondering how many ads are on the linked page.

The Only Answer

[mfh]

None. Zero. They could all go bankrupt and it would be business as usual for me after some slight adjustment.

As soon as the tech giants learn that people couldn't live without them (despite whether it's true or not), that's when they always start creeping into nefarious territory with their policies to push their profits higher.

I'd also like to add that Facebook was caught performing psychological experiments on their users that included attempting to make users extremely sad.

Fuck Facebook. I left them YEARS ago and haven't looked back. Now when I talk to friends I meet up with, we have something to talk about because they have no idea what I've been up to AND I have no idea what they've been doing lately.

Other than Facebook I'm indifferent to every other large business. I'll buy products that have high quality longevity and are a value to me. The second they tamper with the quality, I lose trust in them and move on to some other product.

I've exited entire markets of products just because none of the offerings were valuable to me. My wallet thanked me for that.

Re:That's an easy one...

[ArhcAngel]

None of these companies would exist without IBM. I'm pretty sure all of the major banks and exchanges still run big iron (Mainframes). Try and buy something from Amazon without money/credit. Just because they aren't consumer facing doesn't mean they aren't relevant.

Re:Microsoft

[Spacelord]

the world runs on Windows and Office

That may have been true in the 90s but it hasn't been the case for a looong time. The web runs the world these days and it's easy to get by without Windows and Office. There are plenty of alternatives. People just stick to Windows out of laziness and because it's what most other people have.

If Office and Windows were to disappear tomorrow, people would just standardize on something else and they would get by just as well.