Google, Facebook and Amazon are popular because they are platforms with large networks. They are a one-stop shop.
The problem is they are marketplaces (for information, goods or ads) where they compete in the same space that they own, and they own most of that space as private for profit companies when what they are doing is more like a public utility at this point. But one that completely takes advantage.
What we can do is build platforms to replace them that are actually public using decentralized technologies. For example, much (of course not all) of what Amazon does is connecting people to a very large database of products and making it convenient to buy them.
We could replace that with cryptocurrency and a distributed database or something similar. Such as Ethereum and IPFS or OrbitDB and some related trchnologies. Not saying it's easy or there aren't technical challenges, but they are not insurmountable and the benefits are obvious.
There are open decentralized networks like SSB or Matrix, and a few peer-to-peer ones that may ultimately work out better.
For search and advertising, look at things like YaCy as a potential starting point. But really we have no reason not to explore new and existing distributed protocols for search and information exchange other than sheer laziness. And there is a fair amount of really useful research. But we are lazy.
The problem is they are marketplaces (for information, goods or ads) where they compete in the same space that they own, and they own most of that space as private for profit companies when what they are doing is more like a public utility at this point. But one that completely takes advantage.
What we can do is build platforms to replace them that are actually public using decentralized technologies. For example, much (of course not all) of what Amazon does is connecting people to a very large database of products and making it convenient to buy them.
We could replace that with cryptocurrency and a distributed database or something similar. Such as Ethereum and IPFS or OrbitDB and some related trchnologies. Not saying it's easy or there aren't technical challenges, but they are not insurmountable and the benefits are obvious.
There are open decentralized networks like SSB or Matrix, and a few peer-to-peer ones that may ultimately work out better.
For search and advertising, look at things like YaCy as a potential starting point. But really we have no reason not to explore new and existing distributed protocols for search and information exchange other than sheer laziness. And there is a fair amount of really useful research. But we are lazy.