My Problem

I’m a Google user (who isn’t now a days?) and I rely on a lot of Google products, but I’m also loosing faith in Google because they keep putting out half baked products then when not enough users use them they kill the products. I moved away from Microsoft two years ago due to privacy concerns and the unethical rolled out of Windows 10, and it was easier because I was already heavily invested in the Google ecosystem.

This is where my problem comes in, because I’m so heavily invested in the Google ecosystem I’m kind of stuck, there really isn’t any other platform with equivalent services to Google for me to move to. Sure I could build a server and run something like OwnCloud on it and have most of the things I need, but that requires me to spend a decent amount of money, and possess computing knowledge I don’t have (though I’m sure I could learn).

Now if I want a managed suite of products like the Google services I currently use one thing I’m going to to look for is staying power, I’m sure there are a bunch of companies trying to offer all the services I want, but will they be around in five years? I’m guessing the answer is no. So whether I like it or not it looks like I’m going to have to bow down to our corporate overlords for these services.

So while I’ve been on the hunt for a new corporate overlord I came across Amazon AWS and found that they offer a lot of the same services for their business clients, but they don’t offer the free services like Google. Don’t get me wrong, for a low monthly fee I’m willing to pay to get what I need, the problem is AWS seems a little scattershot and really is more focused on business, so it really doesn’t fit my needs.

The Realisation

All this got me thinking, Amazon already has the basic infrastructure to take on Google, with a little work they could beat Google at their own game and relegate them back to what they started off as, a search company. Right now Google is building up ill will by pushing out half baked products, killing beloved products, and being notorious for their lack of customer support. If Amazon were to take things they already have, AWS, Prime services, and Twitch and put them together into a consumer grade offering, they could start pulling users from Google.

There would be slow adoption rate at first but once people saw that Amazon was sticking with it and enough early adopters started talking about it more and more people would start using Amazon services over Google. An big key would be data transfer, no one wants to just leave everything they’ve got on Google, so Amazon would have to set up enough equivalent products that Google users could use Google Takeout and use an easy uploader on Amazon to migrate their data without loss.
This was originally posted on my blog at oppy1984.com