When did we all start trusting Google with basically our entire lives? In this video I dig into that uncomfortable question, because I realized I never had some big “yes, take my data” moment—I just made a thousand tiny convenience decisions over the years. I talk about my own browser journey, from being hyped on early Chrome back in 2009, to bouncing around (Firefox, Opera), to getting legitimately impressed by Microsoft’s AI-powered Edge in 2023… and then slowly drifting right back to Chrome anyway because of little things like tab handling on my Z Fold 7 and Gemini features that only worked in Chrome. From there, I zoom out to how Google effectively runs the internet: Chrome is ~65% of browsing, and when you include Chromium-based browsers, it’s over 70% on a Google foundation. I break down why that matters—especially with Manifest V3 making ad blockers like uBlock Origin worse on Chrome—and why Firefox is basically the last major independent holdout. Then I do the thing you should absolutely (carefully) do: Google Takeout. Seeing my own 527GB archive, including a 99,000-search text file and even voice-related data, was a visceral wake-up call. I don’t have a perfect solution, but my takeaway is simple: make privacy a conscious decision, not just a pop-up you wave away.