Google has end to emd control over some users internet experience, and much of it in other cases. They own:
* 100s of thousands of servers
* domain registrar
* ~50% of web browsers in US.
* code CDN, FontService
* define web standards
* hundreds of millions of emails.
* CA implementation
* ISP infrastructure
* Develop software for a large part of thr mobile ecosystem.
* decide what you see when you go to search (most search copy google, buy results, or both)
* also many of the web beacons and advert targeting.
* oh, and the largest collection of video and images in the world.
So when you say, just do what they say or get deindexed, and you present it as if that is reasonable(not just you but the collective you) I just think I must be insane.
I mean, assuming google is good (i fo mostly) doesn't mean I would let them become the entire internet.
Real question, if google were to disappear vs. the "too big to fail banks" that would have gone under, where a case could be madr for a few certainly failing, what would have bigger impact today?
Tl;dr everyone cares about single point if failure except at the macro system level: finance, banking, healthcare, etc
In my experience, all those requests to api.recaptcha.net get forwarded to "www.google.com"
My experience has been that if a user for whatever reason cannot access the IP du jour for www.google.com (www.google.[cctld] will not suffice) then that user is prevented from using the myriad websites that rely on recpatcha.net.
Now, I could be wrong and maybe there is something I am missing, but in my experience this is a sad state of centralization and reliance by websites on Google. Quite brittle.
While I consider Snowden a proper hero it is almost a certainty that this could happen to a "friendly" entity like google. In that, the NSA likely has some top programmers who could get a job there and compromise something, learn enough info to find a vuln, or pass data out. This is of course making the massive assumption that they aren't already cooperating at a system level either voluntarily or involuntarily.
As you can see, as search deteriorates google is motivated to (in my opinion benevelontly) use any means neccessary to continue to fund their larger goals of a connected and automated techno-utopia. However, they will be tempted to leverage what amounts to almost literally 50% of the worlds thoughts to build systems to make short term profit while pressing forward.
Just a few that immeadiately come to mind:
* using their network to control an entire alt coin ecosystem
* using data trends to trade on global markets
* start a competing business and deindex or penalize a competitor.
* build skynet (kind of joke)
So basically, those scenarios are fairly suboptimal and I could certainly imagine that several thousand genius with knowledge of googles systems AND the worlds data could likely be profitable quickly.
