Google apparently dropped all the accounts of a statistics professor, with no warning. His activities and his blog were apolitical, but that didn’t seem to matter to Google. He lost his blog archives, his email address, and years of archived emails. Google tried something similar with psychology professor Jordan Peterson until public outcry forced Google to back down.

Google has taken too much power over modern life, to the point where it has near-absolute power over many people’s digital lives. And as Lord Acton pointed out, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The thing is, Google only has the power that we give it. We could destroy Google in a week, if we wanted to. If we all stopped using it, it would lose all of its adverting revenue and fall apart.

Don’t use Google. For that matter, it’s best to avoid any free internet service financed through advertising. With all of those services, YOU are the product being sold to advertisers. So, avoid services supported by advertising. Use services you pay for so that you’re the customer and not the product. Or use fremium businesses that don’t accept advertisers, but instead provide a free service that you can upgrade with more features by payng. At least to them, you have value as a potential customer.

I pay for my blog’s hosting. I pay for my own email. I am their customer, not their  product.

And for when you can’t avoid using Google, always use an adblocker to starve it of revenue. My favorite is Ublock Origin, available for Chrome, Firefox, and Palemoon.

UPDATE: After the story spread on the internet, Google restored access. Most of us wouldn’t be so lucky.