Google builds entire datacenters with their own transformers and power lines, if not their own powerplants. You plug these datacenters directly into the high voltage networks that don’t have big capacity problems.
The low voltage grids in residential areas on the other hand were build as cheap as possible, so increasing the load by 20% is already too much for most of them.
They get that same location data with or without maps. As long as you are using stock android, Google knows exactly where you’ve been even if you enable airplane mode. They get your position with WiFi networks and other phones around you and store that data with timestamps. Maps doesn’t give them any extra data, it simply binds you into their ecosystem.
Tbh, that’s pretty much the only thing Youtube did in the last few years that I can’t really complain about. I despise their business tactics, but using your VPN to get regional prices just fucks it up for everyone. In first world countries, it’s one or two hours of work. The same price in poor countries would be up to a monthly wage, that’s why it costs them less. Abusing this will only end in most companies removing regional differences and blocking VPNs completely.
There are other methods to get the same functionality, use them instead of creating problems for others.
As long as even basic features like push notifications are locked behind Google services, I’d hardly count that as a win. The Google monopoly on android is even worse than the Microsoft monopoly on PCs. Microsoft has at least some good alternative with the current Linux environment, but Googles only competitor is apple with an even worse system.
Sure there are projects like LinageOS and GraphenOS, but both are still reliant on micro G or containerised Goggle apps.
You haven’t worked in any customer support position, and it shows. The amount of slurs hurled at them is far greater than anything found in a few github comments.
So they do the exact sams thing as the LLM?
Most games suffering from cheaters are at least partially free. LOL, Valorant, COD, CSGO, Fortnite, Overwatch, Various MMOs.
Getting a new bot-leveled account for any of these games costs somewhere from 0.30€ to 5€. Ban one account and they just use the next one for pretty much free.
Most of these games do account ban waves every few weeks to months, but if its this easy to create new accounts that’s useless. IP bans aren’t possible anymore since public IPs are dynamic and change every few days to weeks. Hardware bans, while technically possible, can still be circumvented easily by spoofing your mac-address and serial numbers.
The only way to minimise cheating would be linking your Social security number (or the equivalent for your Country) with your account, which leads to a lot of privacy issues. And even that isn’t foolproof. LoL in Korea already uses this system and still has issues with a lot of trolls, scripters and wintraders.
And both of these companies build and purchased more renewable energy sources than all 100+ countries combined. Microsoft has committed to be carbon free by 2030, and while I don’t belive in their commitment, they at least seem to be trying contrary to most nations. They even invested in nuclear plants for their power needs.
You can fault both companies for a lot of different reasons, but in terms of carbon emissions due to power usage, they are better than 99.9% of the countries on that list.