I got bit in the ass by Google when I decided to try using their domain service and they decided to nuke it and sell it to Squarespace. Google domains was so good too. I jumped ship to Porkbun before my domains were completely locked into Squarespace so I managed to get out before it was too late thankfully
It’d almost definitely kill Google if they were to kill Gmail. Gmail, YouTube, and Android are pretty much what brings people to use Google services in the first place. I was just referencing the people that panicked when they saw the fake email going around that looked like it was from Google themselves about sunsetting Gmail. Google’s reputation didn’t help quell the panic which is why they had to come out to the public saying they won’t shut down Gmail
Google does have a reputation for unnecessary and/or prematurely killing everything it makes so I wouldn’t blame people for believing an email that looked like it was from Google saying that Gmail is shutting down in August
I think the reason Lemmy took off is because it’s decentralized and a single person or corporation can’t easily enshittify it to make stonks go up before jumping ship with their golden parachute. Tildes being invite only also really killed any chance of really growing imo. It was the same mistake Google+ made. I never really heard of any of the alternatives other than kbin since they didn’t have the same voice as lemmy and kbin had in the whole reddit API enshitification and death of 3rd party clients
It’s just a bad habit for me really. I’m so used to reddit immediately slaughtering anyone who doesn’t conform with the hivemind even though Lemmy isn’t like that
We still had a networked DOS 3.1 server running at my last job for the intercom system in the building when I was IT that ended up blowing up in a power surge we had (it was wired into a direct 12v power rail that for some reason had no surge protection). Of course they did the obvious thing to do and spent $4k to get the exact same DOS 3.1 box second hand to replace it with
One of my local gas stations had that to where it was so loud you can hear them in the car. A few weeks after they installed them, someone came by with a hand drill and drilled out all of the speakers. Not sure what happened to that hero but we need more people like them.