I’ve always been an Android and anti-Apple fanboy ever since my college years. I preferred the open system of Android, Chrome, etc.

But now as of 2020, Android and Google is starting to creep into ways into my life which I don’t like.

The Google Play store is essentially an advertising playground

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Has the Android/Google team just given up on the Play store? It’s quite ugly and a mess. I feel like I’m in some sort of discount grocery store or dollar tree. Everything looks like cheap advertisements. Even worse, since Google got rid of the yellow bubble around “Ad”, the average user won’t even know its an advertisement. Super sneaky Google.

Not only that, but Google is starting to get *too good* with their ads. It is actually at the point that they really do know what I’m interested in, which is really bad. I didn’t want to think about Cryptocurrency this morning, but now I was hit with this ad, now my brain thinking flow is all disturbed and thrown off:

What does Android have going for it?

Well certainly Google Maps is the killer app. But it’s starting to get overwhelmed with advertisements too! This alone makes me want to get an iPhone and start using Apple Maps over Google Maps (even though Google Maps is the superior product).

The new Google VPN seems promising, for Google One subscribers. I’m a little bit skeptical, but more for it than against it. I’m sure Google still has some hidden backdoor access to it.

Towards a more beautiful digital future

Perhaps this is where Apple is gonna keep going up and up. The user experience is far more beautiful.

Perhaps this is where Steve Jobs was right; a closed system is better for more beautiful experiences. Kind of like Epicurus and his closed and walled-off garden.

Google is an open system, for open source, but an uglier experience

I have a lot of friends who work at Google and I’ve been very pro Google since the early days, and I still am. But my realization:

In order to make all this open stuff possible, it needs to be populated with (ugly) advertisements.

Whoever says that they “don’t mind” ads are probably lying. If you has the choice to have those annoying pre-roll or during-roll advertisements on websites, blogs, YouTube videos or not… wouldn’t you prefer to *not* have the advertisements?

The rich and elite have the privilege of an ad-free life experience

My simple prediction and forecasting of the future:

The present and the future will be very prosperous for nearly all. The only difference is that the rich and elite have the privilege of *not* having their existences plagued with advertisements.

New ways to make money without advertisements

Perhaps this is where cryptocurrency is interesting to me: new ways to monetize online *without* the need for advertisements?

Is crypto going to spell doom for Google?