What if Google suddenly disappeared entirely?

b/Tech, Science & IT publicado por u/Dream of Omnimaga December 26, 2015, 02:35:55 AM

What if Google suddenly disappeared entirely?

I was curious about something a while ago since we are so dependent on technology: What if, one day, Google immediately ceased all its operations and shut down all its services with no warning, destroyed all its backups and vanished entirely? Would people just get used to Vimeo and Bing while mourning the loss of billions of videos and e-mails over the last decade? Would worldwide economy collapse beyond recovery? Or would modern civilization simply collapse into some sort of dystopia, unable to adapt to such drastic change even if it's not as bad as power going out worldwide permanently?

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u/Yuki December 26, 2015, 03:04:20 AM

Google shuts some of their services down once in a while, such as Google Code (that one was kind of drastic, but at least they offered people to rehost their stuff on GitHub), but most of the time it's their ventures they deem failed and don't want to waste any resources on them anymore. If the whole of Google would cease to exist, then that would be a problem indeed. Google is considered a giant, to the point they can do whatever they want with the internet, so if they are to disappear that would leave a big hole in it. Of course, some geeks figured out how to live without Google, I'm sure the Internet would be able to recover well.

u/Dream of Omnimaga December 26, 2015, 08:22:55 AM

Yeah I was talking about if everything ran by Google and the company itself vanished off the face of the earth instantly, or following a massive financial scandal, with no warning and no trace of any backups.

u/CVSoft December 26, 2015, 08:32:40 AM

The answer is obvious.

u/Adriweb December 26, 2015, 01:41:32 PM

Lots of worldwide issues regarding GMail first, then Web Search, then YouTube, then everything else, I guess (by order of priority)

u/c4ooo December 27, 2015, 03:20:53 AM

A bit different scenario, but still interesting

Last Edit: January 04, 2016, 02:49:41 PM by Streetwalrus

u/Legimet December 28, 2015, 02:48:32 AM

This hypothetical situation shows why the Internet should be more decentralized.

u/Dream of Omnimaga December 28, 2015, 05:56:38 AM

Quote from: CVSoft on December 26, 2015, 08:32:40 AM
The answer is obvious.

Bing lacks a video sharing social network, though.

@Legimet actually got it I think. The main problem with such scenario is the fact that everything is so centered around Google and the question is if we're too dependent on Google or not, like people are dependent on electricity and Internet.

u/alexgt January 03, 2016, 06:31:01 AM

All elderly people would be sitting infront of their PC typing in www.google.com over and over trying to get it to work

But that would really suck since I use it for almost everything online

u/novenary January 04, 2016, 02:56:03 PM

Quote from: c4ooo on December 27, 2015, 03:20:53 AM

A bit different scenario, but still interesting

I've seen this video, it's pretty interesting.
At this point I don't depend too much on google anymore, I've been trying to get out of the matrix.

u/alexgt January 04, 2016, 04:26:43 PM

But google is so useful

I mostly just use it as a search engine thought.

u/Araidia January 04, 2016, 04:31:51 PM

Quote from: CVSoft on December 26, 2015, 08:32:40 AM
The answer is obvious.

But It's Not Google

u/alexgt January 04, 2016, 04:34:14 PM

Because Its No Good

(

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u/c4ooo January 04, 2016, 08:12:44 PM

Well WolframAlpha can (and should) replace google for anything math related. The two should sign an agreement so WA results are piped into google. So for example, if i search "factor(thegame)" into google it will use WA to actualy factor it and not return some useless websites.

u/novenary January 04, 2016, 08:24:26 PM

Quote from: alexgt on January 04, 2016, 04:26:43 PM
But google is so useful I mostly just use it as a search engine thought.

Yeah that's the point. I stopped using things such as google calendar/contacts/whatever, even the play store isn't welcome on my phone anymore. I still do use search, youtube and translate and I'm strongly considering getting off gmail too.