Drop a Tech Giant

I was listening to ATP (Accedential Tech Podcast) and they found this quizz which goes like this:

If an evil monarch forced you to choose, in what order would you give up these inescapable giants of tech?

Before you read on about my reasoning go over there and take the quizz yourself.

How I chose

1. Apple
2. Amazon
3. Microsoft
4. Facebook
5. Alphabet

My reasoning

This is why I chose this particular order.

Apple

I don't use any of Apples products.

I was using them back in the days, especially during the time when the iPhone came out in Sweden and I was at the university, I was a propper Apple Fanboy. But this changed a couple of years ago, I wrote about that in a seperate article before.

Amazon

Amazon doesn't even have a website in Sweden.

I do buy at Amazon sometimes, then I use their german store. But because they don't have a Swedish couterpart to it all the advantages they have in other countries like 24h delivery, cheaper prices, and so on. It doesn't matter if I chose them or a local website, they both take a couple of days to deliver, actually many swedish ones are even faster. And I use PriceRunner to compare prices and order from those which have best reviews, or have the best price.

And yes I know, as all af those giants they have other things to offer which are very important to people, especially AWS, but here again I don't use it (directly).

Microsoft

I don't use any product from Microsoft in particulor myself but Skype.

But I really like what's going on over at Microsoft Research, the company to me seems, at least for now, as one of the more inovative of those giants. They also showed that they are able to change the direction they're heading so I'm a bit excited to see what they will come up with next. And Skype is always the last resort for audio/video which basically always works if all the other ones don't.

Facebook

I use facebook every day.

This feels like a guilty pleasure thing, I know it's bad and I'm activelly working within the IndieWeb community to offer an alternative, but I still use it a lot every day. Especially to chat with friends who don't use IRC. And yes, Instagram is really nice and nowadays I even gave in and use WhatsApp to chat with my family.

Alphabet

Alphabet, which is the parent company of Google, owns YouTube which I also use every day, and I really really like it too. The technology behind is superb, but also the community of small content creators is really really awesome. I stopped using a TV several years ago, everything I used to get from a TV I nowadays get via YouTube. I really love the fact that it makes the idea behind the WWW so accessible, that everyone can be a content creator, you just need a smartphone so you can record yourself and off you go!

YouTube is the reason why I chose Alphabet last. If they didn't own it, I wouldn't care for them, for everything else they offer I use or can easily use alternatives.

How did you chose?

So tell me, how did you chose and why?