alt Hacker News> Google is the company that created a class-less non-hierarchical internet.
Can you explain what you mean by this? I disagree but I don't understand how you think Google did this so I am very curious.
For my part, I started using the internet before Google, and I strongly hold the opinion that Google's greatest contribution to the internet was utterly destroying its peer to peer, free, open exchange model by being the largest proponent of centralizing and corporatizing the web.
The alternative was a teleco AOL style internet with pay tiers for access to select websites. The free web of the 90's would remain, but would be about as culturally relevant as Linux.
Surely you have to recognize the inconsistency of saying that Google "corporatized" the web, while the vast majority of people using google have never paid them anything. In fact many don't even load their ads or trackers, and still main a gmail account.
If we put on balance good things and evil things google has done, with honest intention, I struggle very hard to counter "gave the third world a full suite of computer programs and access to endless video knowledge for free with nothing more than dumpy hardware", while the evil is "conspired with credit card companies to find out what you are buying".
This might come off like I am just glazing google. But the point I am trying to illuminate is that when there is big money at play, people knee-jerk associate it with evil, and throw all nuance out the window.
Besides, IRC still exists for you and anyone else to use. Totally google free.