While there's not any reason not to hire people from something like this, don't assume the person is competent just because they went to a coding academy. Assess these candidates the same as you would anybody else.
(Mostly) agree. Google is out of control, and they'll do anything to sell more ads.
The best solution is simply to not use google products (which aren't that good anyway).
- duckduckgo for search
- dropbox, box, etc. for files
- openstreetmap for maps
- firefox for web browsing (except firefox is about to introduce advertising, too, so I'm not sure about this one.)
This way, your data is decentralized, making it harder to track you. Also, these companies each focus on just one product, meaning their products are better anyway.
Google needs to make the cars overly cautious though, because everyone is watching them. One accident, and the whole idea of a self-driving car will be called into question by many people.
Yes, I think you can compete. Google has a core group of products (search, android,chrome, new products) in which they invest most of their time, and the rest has little or no development occurring. Google news fits this category, so you probably could compete.
In my opinion, this wouldn't actually be convenient:
- Many of these (uber, amazon, Wikipedia, PayPal) have nothing in common. Yes, you can mix a bunch of different apps together into one. But how is one complex app better than many simple ones?
- While social networks are basically the same in terms of functionality, the communities are different. If you mix together every social network, the community will suffer.
Also, I think people like having different apps for a couple reasons:
- Apps are modular, so you get to choose what you want. With one huge system, you get everything, whether you want it or not.
- Apps are easy to conceptualize - "In x app, I do y." It's much harder to understand a giant system (for example, why so many people confuse gmail and google itself).