No. of Recommendations: 11
I've been using the 'Google is woke' blowback to add substantially to my position. The Gemini release was a real slip up, but I doubt it matters 5 - 10 years from now.
Briefly, my thesis is that the competition is not just a click away.
U.S. hyper partisanship may be able to make a Bud consumer a Coors, etc. consumer, long term, I don't know. They're both bland beers, so the choice at the corner store doesn't mean much, and the Americana of it all was all part of Bud messaging, from what I understand anyways (I've lived in the US, but am not a citizen), so maybe the idea that 'real Americans' drink Modello has some purchase.
Jim Jordan is up on Congress & on Fox News decrying woke Google and suggesting some clandestine plot with Joe Biden and the Democratic party, but he has a YouTube channel, and isn't getting rid of it anytime soon. If he's one of the many who has gmail, or uses Chrome, or has Android, I suspect those habits won't change easily either. Waymo just got some big news, soon enough he may even take a Waymo, perhaps without even identifying it as an Alphabet product.
I've used DuckDuckGo before for reasons of principle (privacy rights concerns). I have no great love for Google as a corporation. The main problem was it was just so convenient to slowly wade back to Google (what's that? I can just search in my chrome browser?). And if we're taking about AI, I certainly wouldn't be thinking MSFT was a better corporate actor.
Do the big tech companies (X now excepted -- how's business going?) have an anti-Republican bent? Yes. They're full of youngish college graduates & non-whites, not to mention immigrants. The core of the Republican base is now white evangelicals and non-college educated white men. I've lived in Silicon Valley, and have friends and colleagues who are in some major roles with the big players, including over in Seattle (that draws heavily from the SV & SF talent pool). It is not a 'culture' that is particularly open to the modal Trump or Republican voter, and it won't be anytime soon.
Is this a Google specific 'problem'? If it is (I highly doubt it), and Gemini slip up aside, I suspect it's more of an advantage than a disadvantage, to be honest. This isn't slinging beer to American men.
