When it comes to technology, people prefer one-stop shopping. Google's email, mapping, mobile OS, search, calendars, video, photos are all free and best-of-class or at least good enough to be satisfactory to 80% of the people, who think they're getting a bargain even as they put more and more of their personal information in Google's hands.<p>It seems as though there's no way to break this voluntary-monopoly. Waze came along with brilliant innovations like BLE devices monitoring traffic in underpasses etc. (my company makes some of the devices they use) and finding best alternative routes, and an innovative UX, so Google simply bought them, problem solved.<p>There's a whole menagerie of alternatives to Youtube, but they're like ants next to an elephant. And of course, Youtube itself was bought by Google; they've advanced it technically, but it was better in the old days, less censorship and better remuneration for creators.<p>Like a lot of other techies, I've switched to DDG for searches and I don't really miss Google search. Probably I use !g about once or twice a month.<p>It seems to me there's lots of opportunities to improve on Google's offerings; Apple seems uninterested in competing head-to-head aside from its mobile phone OS, but there are still innovations out there waiting to be discovered. Perhaps some here will be among those future billionaires, giving us better alternatives to The Goog which in my opinion has gotten a little too big for its britches.