Google is sort of the Walmart of the web. They’re huge, into everything and generally cheap (usually free). With the difference being that they at least pay their workers fairer wages. But I don’t like to put all my eggs in one basket. When Google+ was announced I was curious (especially since I was designing my own social network at the time) but I was also hesitant about putting that much power in the hands of one company.

Google already acts as both my primary search engine and email system. I’m even starting to use Google docs more often. But I didn’t also want to give them my daily social networking attention on top of all that. Which is another (although smaller) reason why I ‘m not an Android user and haven’t even considered a Chromebook for my hardware and OS of choice. I prefer my personal computers and smartphone to be made by Apple and my social networking time spent elsewhere, such as facebook at the moment (athough that could and I hope does change to something else that is also not Google powered).

Speaking of Chrome, it’s installed on all my machines, but again, I only use it here and there. My primary home browser is Safari and I use Firefox at work.

I don’t dislike Google. In fact I like their push to innovate with self driving cars, Google Glass and other projects. I just don’t want to put too much into one company. Even this website is separate from all the other services I use. Powered by WordPress with some WordPress.com interactivity while hosted by a smaller separate hosting company; I am again splitting all of my online content into different baskets.

It’s not about paranoia for me. I’m really not paranoid and just assume I’m being watched and tracked by everyone everywhere. It’s more about supporting the free market and competition by putting my time and money into services and products from several companies instead of just one monolithic company. But there is s small degree of paranoia, I am putting a lot of content online. The last thing I want is all of that content becoming inaccessable because one servics decides to ban me/delete me/mess up my account for whatever reason or a server crashes and whoops! there it all goes.  Puting your eggs in more than one basket is always the smarter option when it comes to anything.