By Millions of Americans have started the year of 2021 off questioning the dominance of big tech companies and platforms like Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. These tech companies practice a style of business which many believe could be monopolistic, if not incredibly close to it known as Walled Garden building. In essence meaning they build an ecosystem of products that either highly rely on each other or even exclusively rely on each other.
Explanation of How Big Tech Builds Ecosystems
For example in 2016, 7 years after buying YouTube, Google forced all YouTube users to have a Google+ account in order to leave comments and spent months making Google users combine their Google accounts into one account for all services. Facebook pulls user data from their various platforms to help inform their advertising system. Apple products are all designed to work with each other, but not with other hardware or software. Google and Apple own and control their own software app stores where they also take a hefty cut of all revenue and payments processed via apps on their systems.
During the pandemic Google’s Calendar, used by tens of millions of users to schedule meetings, began auto scheduling meetings to use the service Google Meet continuing something they had done for Google Hangouts previously, even though the pandemic pushed more users onto independent systems like Zoom and GoToMeeting. Google never even tried integrating third-party independent services and still doesn’t nor do they give you much choice, you literally have to notice that they are scheduling a Google Meet call and cancel it on your own.
Google also has an 86.86% search market share, dominating other engines and therefore also dominates the search advertising industry. This has remained true even when studies have shown similarities in quality between Google’s search results and competitors or even when competitor engines have been shown to have higher quality results.
Combined Google, Facebook, and Amazon command roughly 70% of all online ad spend according to a 2019 report. This might make consumers feel like they have no other options for similar services after they have had a bad experience or feel like exploring options.
Why You Feel Like There Are No Alternatives
Why is this happening? It is a complicated situation, but it might simply come down to the way our brains process new information. The media really only covers the big name tech companies and your family and friends only talk about those brands they’ve heard about, which could be adding to this false thinking through a psychological phenomenom known as the “illusory truth effect”. The more media, your peers, and so called ‘influencers’ repeat the same information, the more likely we are to believe it is true. In this case simply repeating a brand combined with what that brand is used for in videos, memes, posts, news articles, etc… If the media simply doesn’t have time to cover a small startup challenging Facebook, then they get less recognition from us and people we know and our minds find it harder to register a competitor when performing evaluation of available alternatives.
Even if you hear about a brand once, you are more likely to not consider that brand as an actual viable alternative until you hear it repeated multiple times. There are some ways in which media startups themselves have risen to address this inequality for example the tech / business blogging boom in the mid-00’s which brought about Mashable, Tech Crunch, Business Insider and others by helping readers discover the digital world (unfortunately it can be difficult for non-VC backed, non-Valley based startups to get mentioned frequently here). There’s also Product Hunt for SaaS tools and in regions like Dallas there are region specific tech publications like Dallas Innovates. There are a grand total of 0 publications however that dedicate all or a large portion of their reporting time to discussing new alternatives to established tech companies that offer the same or similar features / services or are similar but more basic.
When you’re upset with a monolithic tech company, where do you go?
This creates a bit of a conundrum for tech consumers, when you’re upset with a monolithic tech company, where do you go? In the real world you could just drive away from McDonald’s to Whataburger (if you’re lucky enough to have one) for a fast food burger, or go to a different barber shop if the other one cuts your hair lopsided, or shop at a small boutique for clothes instead of Walmart. Physical space, natural human movement, and easily visible signage creates opportunitity for new businesses to capture new customers in the physical world but that same principal does not work in the digital.
To gain notoriety in the digital world to the level a brand might need to overcome the illusory truth effect you really only have 3 choices:
- Rank highly in Google’s search engine (because it is dominant) on a large percentage of search queries related to your industry.
- Gather a large following on various social media platforms and keep feeding them great content.
- Create new features for your digital pressence that are attractive enough to gain media attention and continue releaseing updates and new features all the time.
Note: Marketers reading this have told me I am wrong and there are more options to overcome the Illusory Truth Effect such as influencer marketing, sensitive subject PR (i.e. social activism / politics), uniquely viral advertising campaigns, and high-quality service offerings. I argue they are wrong and that each of these only serves to input into one of the three listed above, but admit they can be massively helpful.
The first one can require creating large volumes of highly researched content written at a high standard of quality paired with content marketing or expensive PR campaigns, the last two are frequently more closely related to hype building than to doing actual marketing work. This directly impacts how consumers discover alternatives to big tech because to perform any of the three of these an entrepreneur needs to have either a large sum of money or a lot of luck paired up with good timing.
Most big tech companies were once funded by VC’s and as they grow larger those same VC’s enriched by the big company’s IPO may shy away from funding competitors but instead might fund startups that would become acquisition targets for their previously invested companies. This puts alternatives to established big tech companies on an uneven footing requiring them to ‘boostrap’ most of their initial development matching the size, features, and even part of the scale of their larger rivals on an infintismally smaller budget. While they might be able to keep the lights on, keep the passion for their project, and build a good independent alternative they then have to try and promote it to gain adoption using one of the styles mentioned above. There’s also the newest hurdle which appears to be befalling startups and that is the whims of the tech giants who came before them acting as defacto gatekeepers to required infrastrucure of the web needed to gain an audience and grow (for better or worse, it is a hurdle / consideration that must be made).
All of this makes it incredibly difficult for startups to challenge existing tech giants offering the same or very similar services. It’s one of many reasons there are so few video hosting websites today when in 2006 there were literally hundreds, why we see so few social media services offering a personal profile, and why Apple has only one real competitor for smartphone users (being of course another major tech company).
Most of us have noticed this, that when an online service or type of platform gets enough prominence it has virtually no competitors. The biggest incentive in tech is of course to hit the next big idea and stike a goldmine of funding. While this rarely occurs given all of the trillions of websites and apps in existence, it is more likely to occur with an original concept than an existing one with a nuanced change or small twist.
Put even more simply. There is no money in making alternatives to big tech platforms, but doing so comes with a heavy price tag in stress, labor hours, lack of sleep, and personal financial investment.
All of these factors combined; The high profit margins from Walled Garden building, the Illusory Truth Effect, high cost of gaining awareness, difficulty in obtaining funding to compete, current big tech acting as gatekeepers and imposing new rules / restrictions on new entrants, and lack of financial incentive to founders – make it unlikely that alternatives to big tech will be successfully created and more unlikely that when they are we will easily discover them.
That’s why this list was created. To at the very least help contribute to the solution for the discovery problem. If you have realized big techs massive hold on your life, your private data, and how you use the web this list will help you find alternatives to regain control.
Alternatives to Big Tech Companies
The following list contains alternatives to big tech companies that are smaller, less monopolistic (i.e. don’t own an integrated or restrictive ecosystem), and more independent without being affiliated or aligned to one religious, cultural, or political ideology. Select a big tech company from the list below to see the alternatives I have uncovered so far.
Choose One: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Apple (computers), Apple (iPhone), Apple Music, Gmail, Android, Microsoft (Power BI), Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Amazon Prime Video, Amazon
Google’s core business is acting as a general information search engine, or just a ‘search engine’ in common parlance. While there are other search engines in existence, most are unable to match Google’s search quality meaning they typically include more spam and less useful documents high up in their rankings compared to Google. However, Google’s actual revenue generator is selling ads against the search results, over the past 23 years we have seen a steadily increasing number of ads placed on to the search results making it harder and harder for users to find the quality search results they actually came to the engine for.
A few employees have left Google and tried to start their own search engine, none of those ever lasted very long. The few remaining competitors Google does have around the globe are largely regional (Yandex in Russia, Alibaba in China, Naver in Korea, Qwant in France, Swisscows in Switzerland, etc…)
Here are some alternative search engines to Google’s Search for US and Canada users that have a similar quality level for search results but often fewer ads or provide other features.
1. DuckDuckGo – Founded in 2008, DuckDuckGo is known around the world as the privacy-first search engine. Not only do they encrypt all search activity, but they also do not keep a record of your search history anywhere. This reduces their ability to suggest personalized results tailored to you or to show you post results you’ve searched for, but makes the engine highly unique.
2. Ecosia – Powered by Google’s largest rival in search, Microsoft, this engine offers quality search results that make a positive environmental impact. Ecosia donates a portion of revenue they make to plant trees. As of publishing the service had planted 117,579,750 trees reducing climate impacts and even helping to make harsh areas like Burkina Faso fertile again. The search engine also claims to remve 1kg of carbon-dioxide from the air with each search. While the results are powered by Microsoft, Ecosia claims to also protect the privacy of users promosing to not use third-party data trackers and anonymizing user data one-week after a search is performed.
3. Neeva – Founded by two high ranking ex-Google executives, Sridhar Ramaswamy ex-SVP of Google Ads and Vivek Raghunathan ex-VP of Engineering for YouTube monetization, Neeva is a privacy-first search engine similar to DuckDuckGo but has zero advertising. Which is incredibly ironic when you realize the two co-founders were major driving forces behind Google’s billions of dollars in advertising revenue. The search engine also counts among its early employees Bill Coughran the ex-SVP of Google Search and Margo Georgiadis Ex-President of Google Americas who bring with them strong leadership and engineering chops (Bill is also an investor with Sequoia Capital now). All of this means Neeva has a chance to succeed where other ex-Google employee search engines have failed by producing a set of high-quality results in a far more user-friendly fashion than Google’s current ad laden pages which make finding the organic content more and more difficult. You can use the ad free search engine for free right now (or for a free trial period, it seems to change) after the free period the service will cost users a flat rate of $4.95 usd / month. Currently Neeva only has an iOS app available but can be used from the browser on all mobile devices.
Honorable Mention
4. Bing – Remarkably Microsoft has built a quality search engine over the years and also built up a sort of alliance among other search engines to use Bing’s results or advertising in some way. While not small or independent by any stretch of the imagination, and while part of a larger ecosystem build at Microsoft, Bing is the only true competitor to Google currently and has won over critics who tried the engine in the past. Bing’s Android app has over 5 million downloads and it’s currently #34 on Alexa’s most visited websites in the world.
In 2015 Lifehacker said Bing’s video search was better than Google’s (even though most of those videos are on YouTube): https://lifehacker.com/search-engine-showdown-google-vs-bing-1739263052
In 2017 a writer for Search Engine Watch said that Bing did 5 things better than Google: Image Search, Video Search, Free Stuff, Social Media Integration, and Overall Look: https://lifehacker.com/search-engine-showdown-google-vs-bing-1739263052
Facebook was not the original social media website with a profile and status updates, but they did figure out how to make the style of website profitable wiping out or consuming their progenitors with ease. As Facebook grew massive in size and power, it became very unattractive for startup founders to try and create something to compete with them and most concepts that have started ultimately failed or were absorbed by Facebook themselves. When writing this I wanted to find alternatives that were similar to Facebook’s core functions of making a profile, adding status updates, and connecting with friends and family. This proved incredibly challenging as most startup social networks try and do things very different from Facebook instead of repeating what they’ve already done, however, I was able to find a few.
1. Vero – This social platform was built by a Lebanese billionaire as a replacement for Facebook that strips out the algorithm driven News Feed, advertising, and user data mining, instead focusing on putting users in control of the experience. The company doesn’t make money and they haven’t done much marketing it seems in the past 2 years, but in 2018 Vero had reported a rapid rise to 4 million users. Much like the old Myspace days you’ll have to go look for your friends to see what they’ve been up to, but honestly that might not be such a bad thing.
side note: I’m on Vero with a test profile you can see here: https://vero.co/joeyoungblood
2. Ello – You might remember Ello from 2014 when a bunch of people angry at Facebook flooded the platform only to find it wasn’t ready for the onslaught of usage. I quit using it after a few weeks time myself and from the looks of my friends profiles most of them did to. Since that original burst of usage and then drop, Ello has continued to evolve. When I last checked in on them around 6 years ago the layout and branding felt almost prentious, now it feels a lot more inviting and user friendly. Ello has also changed away from the Facebook-style format and instead of being for friends and family they are taking a Myspace-like approach trying to connect musicians, artists, and their fans. If you created an Ello account during the hype years ago and you haven’t logged in for some time, when you do Ello will likely ask you to select if you’re an artist/creator or a fan. If you’re a fan they’ll also ask you to pick a few categories and then have you follow some random accounts. All in all, it’s worth a second look by anyone wanting to break free of the grasp social media feeds have on our consumption of art, culture, and news.
3. SpaceHey – A retro clone of MySpace which many consider to be the original social media platform, the service currently works and looks much like MySpace did back in its heyday before most of us defected to Zuckerbook. At last look the service had surpassed over 200,000 users and was still growing. The platform has a long ways to go to establish itself with daily active users and to then become profitable in order to stay online, but at least for now it offers a small glimmer of hope that not all social media has to be horrible.
There are a few viable alternatives to Twitter but none that really capture the spirit of the original platform. Even before billionaire Elon Musk purchased Twitter the platform was home to some of the most vitriolic content on the web with different sides of issues brigading the service through bots, zealots, engagement farms, and paid shills to push their competing ideals. There’s evidence that staff and executives prior to the purchase also abused their power over the platfrom to push their own ideals, silence differing opinions, and even to directly profit by selling vefication badges for as much as $15,000. All of this to produce billions in revenue but rarely making a profit.
There are a lot of obvious and good reasons why you might want to explore alternative options and of course reasons that probably are more personal to you. The question is, what part of Twitter’s service are you trying to emulate? If you’re looking for a large plaform where the world discusses things publicly, then you simply won’t find it – at least not in the same real-time microblogging style. If you’re looking for the mirco blogging features only then you have a few options to go with including one simply called “micro blog”.
1. Micro.Blog – Micro.Blog offers a similar experience to Twitter with a few differences. For starters every user gets a subdomain on the service. Secondly you are not able to use hashtags to create adhoc topics for others to post to and read. The final difference is that the service is not free. You can get a free trial and post to your Micro.Blog, but if you want to keep using the service it costs between $5 and $20 per month. It does perplex me why they don’t allow free users to post text-only micro blog post for free in perpetuity, but this is their model. When your free trial expires the content you posted stays up but you can’t post anything new to the service until your account is paid for. However, you can still follow and reply to the posts of others for free. See what posting to Micro.Blog looks like with my account here.
2. Bitclout
Similar to Twitter but built on DeSo, the decentralized social media blockchain. Each user on Bitclout gets a “creator coin” with a value numerated in USD but in actuality you can only obtain it by exchanging DESO, the token used by the platform. It can be a little clunky to join and getting engagement as a new user that isn’t a well-known tech elite or crypto person can be pretty difficult. Once you get going though the platform feels fairly intuitive and easy to use.
My test account is still getting some posts from time to time, if you’re a decentralization person and like memes, I shouldn’t be the worst follow ever: https://bitclout.com/u/joeyoungblood
3. Mastodon Social
While Mastodon is technically a micro-blogging service similar to Twitter, the way it operates is extremely different. Mastodon is an open-source micro-blogging software that requires users to join a server (i.e. a separate instance of the software) ran by volunteers to communicate (instead of all users having profiles on one large platform). The posts on these servers are often private and many require that you apply to join their server.
Its structure is great for a closed group of people even if that’s a large group such as a conference, industry trade group, school, or lan party. The project also offers their own official smartphone apps and has a lot of third-party app options for users. If your purpose is to communicate to a smaller group of friends, colleagues, etc… then Mastodon might be a better fit than say a Slack chat or group text.
If, however, your purpose is to talk to the public or a large variety of groups of people then Mastodon is probably not a great fit. One of the most irritating parts for me is that there are no indicators provided by Mastodon that show how large or active a server is prior to joining, which can make finding an active server difficult. I have noted that new Mastodon users often revert back to using Twitter to ask what servers they should join, which likely doesn’t help drive active usage by those users.
4. If you don’t want to use the above options to replace your Twitter usage instead consider SMS (text messaging), chat apps, or email. I’ve enjoyed using a GroupMe with just a few close friends far more than I ever enjoyed Twitter’s public-only conversation model where nuance and conversation go to die and where if you think even slightly differently you’re verbally assaulted by a massive crowd of bots and people you probably wouldn’t talk to in real life anyways.
Reddit has never been a neutral platform. For the first 7 years of its existence they forced all new subscribers to join the Athieism subreddit (group) where users frequently bash organized religion. Many religious people found this offensive and eventually Reddit removed the requirement. Ever since their rise to the top of the upvote based bookmarking/social media website industry Reddit has been plagued with problems with users sharing fake news, attacking and hateful language, and even worse material. There has been a constant and steady stream of Reddit alternatives for nearly a decade spawning successful websites with a specific focus like Product Hunt which allow users to find the most voted on software and resources. While there have been attempts at making a generic clone of Reddit with similar features, none of these have survived, most often subcumbing to issues related to content moderation or failing to meet investor expectations. Those alternatives that do survive tend to have smaller but more die-hard user bases.
1. SteemIt – SteemIt says that it offers “Communities without borders”. The community discussion site is similar to Reddit in that it offers upvoting and downvoting and that users can create communities. However, the site is heavily connected to cryptocurrencies and requires their usage for performing some actions on the site such as creating a new community.
2. Slashdot – The original social news website site, Slashdot was founded in October of 1997 making it an early web pioneer with other names like Google and Amazon. Since then Slashdot has been sold a few times with the most recent owner actually renaming themselves after the site (Slashdot Media). The website is focused on technology and nerd culture covering science, tech, and a nerdy slant on politics. Slashdot is technically part of a larger tech company called “BizX” and they own one of the most well-known source code respositories (SourceForge). While this puts Slashdot on a path towards being a big tech company, they are still quite small and relatively independent.
3. Product Hunt – Launched in November of 2013 this website allows users to submit SaaS tools, platforms, content, or collections of content that are useful to startup tech companies. Owned now by AngelList, Product Hunt is a great example of how a niche upvote based website can be successful.
4. Hacker News – Owned by startup investment company YCombinator, this website meshes a simple layout and upvote functionality. The website’s content varies but is mostly focused on how digital technology is being used by the world, changes to programming languages, and other news items that would be of interest to either startup founders or investors.
5. The Hack Stack – A newer entrant to the collection of upvote based or social news websites, this website was featured on Product Hunt and works in a similar way as that website focusing on highlighting software products startups can use.
transparency note: Our agency’s founder took over The Hack Stack in January of 2021 after this list was originally written
6. Ecency – Angry at a takeover of the SteemIt system by the founder of the Tron token, STEEM crypto holders forked the platform and started a new blockchain called Hive. One of the Dapps to use the Hive blockchain is Ecency, it looks and works almost indentically to SteemIt in every way.
Note: Ruqqus was recently removed from this list after the platform shut down its main instance in October of 2021 this moved SteemIt into our #1 spot. Users speculate it was due to lack of usage. You can still find the code and build your own site on GitHub: https://github.com/ruqqus/ruqqus
There’s a lengthy diatribe about why Ruqqus shut down on the website posted by a main user. Essentially it appears they had too many angry political posters and not enough revenue or prospects from investors. Read it at your own peril: https://ruqqus.com/
YouTube
YouTube wasn’t the first video sharing website on the internet but the combination of hype and Adobe’s FLV technology flung them into the front of consumers minds. That combined with their acquisition by Google (and some possibly anti-competitive behavior) have locked YouTube into the main spot for video sharing on the web raking in billions of dollars per year in advertising revenue.
1. Vimeo – Founded 2 years before YouTube by the team at CollegeHumor, Vimeo is the original video sharing site on the web. Vimeo isn’t exactly a small website today or part of a small company. It is currently owned by IAC, a conglomerate you rarely hear about that owns a lot of internet properties including HomeAdvisor, The Daily Beast, Very Well, Match.com, Expedia, and others. However, they typically build up companies through acquisitions and bundling and then spin those companies off as public companies or sell them.
Apple (computers)
When it comes to desktop and laptop computers it can be hard to use one without supporting a large tech company. Most are made by or use operating system software from Apple, Microsoft, and Google. The only real way to avoid buying from those companies in this form factor is to go with a Linux distro based computer.
1. Dell (Ubuntu) – Specifically the Dell XPS 13 7390. The single best Ultrabook on the market, a flagship computer from Dell, and one of the best laptops around. Comes standard with Ubuntu instead of Windows, a Linux distro with a stylish GUI that is open source. While you can buy this machine with Windows the Ubuntu version is the one that will keep you from supporting big tech corporations.
Note: This laptop is no longer listed on the Dell website and they no longer list any Linux distro as an OS for their laptops instead offering only Windows or Chrome OS. You may need to find it on the aftermarket or auction sites like eBay.
2. Purism (PureOS) – The Purism Librem 13. This laptop was crowdfunded and is dedicated to user privacy bundling in a physical killswitch. The laptop runs on PureOS, a Debian based linux distro that uses GNOME and is dedicated to privacy. PureOS was created by Purism specifically for their laptops and smartphone the default search engine on this laptop is DuckDuckGo, doubling down on your anti-big tech stance by cutting down on your Google searches instantly.
3. System76 – (Pop!_OS or Ubuntu) – System76 makes two great laptops that are linux based, the Serval WS and Oryx Pro. Serval WS is their high-end offering pairing up an AMD 12 core CPU with Ubuntu or the custom Ubuntu based OS created by System76 Pop!_OS for maximum performance. With up to 64GB of RAM and 12TB of data storage, this is a laptop designed for heavy users, content creators, and gamers. The Oryx Pro is also a beast of a machine bundling a 10th gen Intel 8 core CPU with 64GB of DDR4 RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card.
Apple (iPhone)
1. OnePlus – The OnePlus 8T is an OxygenOS powered phone with a 48 megapixel quad camera, Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU, and is 5G enabled. This is a fast, functional, smartphone with zero attachments to massive tech conglomerates like Apple and Google (OxygenOS is based on Android).
2. Volla Phone – This phone comes standard with either the Android based Volla OS or Ubuntu Touch and is built from scratch with privacy in mind. Designed to give you smartphone features you’re used to with privacy that you want.
3. Fairphone – Billed as the world’s first sustainable smartphone, Fairphone does something Apple and Google think is impossible by working to make a phone with a positive environmental and human impact. Fairphone has a number of accolades that support their claim including a 10/10 score by iFixit and a gold certification from Fairtrade. Each phone also allows you to repair and replace broken components yourself like the camera and speaker modules. The Fairphone 3 has a 48 megapixel rear-facing camera and runs on Android 10. However, I’ve been told this phone can easily have Android taken off and Ubuntu Touch used instead, though that is not offered out of the box.
4. Samsung – Famous for their Android alternative Tizen, Samsung now makes nothing but Android smartphones for the US market (at least listed on their website). That means you probably won’t be able to find anything running on the latest Tizen (4.1) here in the states. However, some Samsung devices allow the bootloader to be unlocked which allows users to install different smartphone operating systems like LineageOS. It should be noted that this would require a lot of knowledge and skill and out of the box is not possible and it could also invalidate any warranty your device has.
Apple Music
1. Spotify – The heavyweight champion of music streaming services, Spotify is an independent company based out of Sweden.
2. Pandora – The original music streaming service based on an independent music discovery service “The Music Genome Project” Pandora is now owned by SiriusXM. At one point Pandora controlled roughly 78% of internet streaming radio.
3. iHeartRadio – A music and podcast streaming app owned by iHeartMedia (formerly Clear Channel). This app allows users to stream local radio from around the world and original podcast content owned or licensed by the brand including Stuff You Should Kno and The Ron Burgandy Podcast. Today with over 250,000 podcasts it is widely considered the leader in commercial podcast content.
Gmail
1. Proton Mail – A european based encrypted email provider that gives every user 500mb of free space. Helps break your usage of Google’s Gmail and is a great all around email provider.
Android
1. Ubuntu Touch – This is an Ubuntu port originally created by Canonical, the creators of Ubuntu, and abandoned in 2017. Now the community of Ubuntu updates and maintains this version which has the most device reach of any Android / iOS alternative out there. Unfortunately due to device and bootloader locking, this is mostly available on older major brand phones, Chinese brand phones, and smaller brand phones like Fairphone and Volla. The OS provides for “device convergence” maintaining capabilities for a smartphone at peak efficiency while also being able to operate in a desktop environment.
2. Plasma Mobile – A privacy-respecting and open source phone operating system built from the ground up.
3. postmarketOS – Often abbreviated as pmOS, this is a linux-based smartphone operating system built by the community to specifically take on Goole’s Android and Apple’s iPhone.
4. OxygenOS – A version of Android created by Chinese phone maker OnePlus specifically for overseas markets.
Microsoft (Power BI)
1. MicroStrategy – To say that MicroStrategy is a business intelligence solution that competes with Power BI may not be fully accurate, in fact, Power BI is probably in a league of their own for Business Intelligence at the moment. That being said MicroStrategy might compete on a level that you need with visualizations and database connection types that help you visualize your business data. You might know the name, that’s because MicroStrategy is currently famous (infamous) for hyping up Bitcoin and calling out anyone who does not hype up the OG crypto currency. They are a publicly held company, a good sign they value their independence from big tech corportions.
2. Databox – A data analytics platform that doesn’t appear to like the term “business intelligence” but that comes packed with a ton of hosted pre-built solutions for marketers and businesses to better understand their data. They will even build one free dashboard for you to give the platform a test run.
3. WP Business Intelligence – One of the largest drawbacks of all major business intelligence solutions is that they require live access to your database. There’s no real reason to mistrust any of them, but in some cases building your own solution might be the best fit. WP Business Intelligence is a fully built, ready to go solution to build your own business intelligence platform using WordPress and the plugin. The pro version comes with 8 database connectors, unlimited database connections, unlimited users, 17 chart types, and datatables along with a slew of extra features. The free version allows the building of data dashboards based on the WordPress database. By building your own solution you also avoid the user / database connection pricing of many other business intelligence solutions.
transparency note: Our agency took over WP Business Intelligence in January of 2021
1. VSCO – I’ll be honest, I know nothing about VSCO except that some young people use it and that it’s not owned by a big tech company.
1. Xing – Based in Hamburg, Germany this platform is mostly focused on German users and Spanish users. However, it has experience international growth lately and directly competes with LinkedIn.
1. We Heart It – Incredibly similar to the original Pinterest with a few changes. For example they use “collections” instead of “boards”.
Amazon (ecommerce)
Literaly any ecommerce store on the internet is a competitor to Amazon. Use a search engine and commit yourself to buying products from not-Amazon at least every now and then. You’ll help keep from giving more power to a massive tech corporation, but more importantly you’ll be supporting a small independent business or at the very least a smaller tech business without a huge tech ecosystem. The list below is not super comprehensive, you may find more on websites dedicated to listing alternatives like Magellan Commerce.
For General Goods
1. Overstock – One of Amazon’s largest competitors by sales volume, Overstock had its first $1 billion sales year in 2010. Today they are mostly focused on home furnishings and decor but also carry jewelry and clothing.
2. eBay – eBay made the list because they are the original online shopping destination and beacuse they have a habit of spinning off their acquired companies into successful public companies. While there’s no doubt eBay is still a huge corporation, they don’t appear to have the lust for building a massive controlling tech ecosystem like Amazon has.
For Tech Products
1. Newegg – One of the original tech ecommerce stores, Newegg offers a huge selection of tech and computer products you won’t find on Amazon. The website has 2 deals sections to browse “Today’s Best Deals” and “Email Deals”.
2. Microcenter – Another physical brick and mortar tech store, Microcenter’s website has a great selection of computer products along with 3D printers and arcade games.
3. TigerDirect – A tech brand with a sorted past, TigerDirect is now owned by Arizona based Insight Enterprises, a B2B tech products and services company. TigerDirect’s website includes a section called “Daily Deal Slasher” where a temporary tech deal is highlighted along with a countdown timer.
4. Radio Shack – Yeah, that Radio Shack. After bankruptcy (the second time) the brand was scooped up by Tai Lopez. Yes, the guy with the allegedly rented lambo in a garage that plagued YouTube ads for almost a full year. I wasn’t going to list Radio Shack here as I assumed it would fold quickly; but Tai, CEO Alex Mehr, and their company Retail Ecommerce Ventures has proven me wrong so far. And, his group has scooped up more defunct store brands along the way including Pier 1, SteinMart, and others. The new Radio Shack is an online only homage to the former glory of the electronics retailer and carries a wide assortment of products including retro Radio Shack branded clothing, electronics components like breadboards, drones, and even Amazon electronic devices. You win this round Tai, congrats to you and the team on the success so far!
Note: Fry’s was recently removed from the top spot on this list after their bankruptcy filing and their website went offline. This moved Newegg into the #1 spot on our list.
For Men’s Apparel
1. Men’s Wearhouse – This Houston based retailer carries stylish business casual and business attire for men.
2. FORTS – The name is an acronym that means “For Our Realest Truest Selves”. A Nashville based men’s clothing retailer focused on casual, streetwear, sneakers, and accessories for men.
Amazon Prime Video
1. Netflix – This indie tech darling has so far been able to fend off growing into a monolithic tech behomoth while producing moderate to great quality content and innovating an entire industry. Most of us already have a Netflix account or use someone else’s, but if you don’t it’s a good time to remind you that Netflix is not owned by a major tech corporation.
2. Tubi – Founded in 2014 as a tech startup, Tubi was acquired by Fox Corporation after Disney purchased the assets of 20th Century Fox. This app allows you to stream shows for free as long as you don’t mind a few ads. While Tubi is now owned by a corporation, it is owned by a media company and not a tech giant. Prior to being purchased as an indepndent company Tubi spent approximatley $100 million per year on content and had over 20 million users, no small feat for an independent streaming company.
3. Vudu – Once owned by Walmart, Vudu is now owned by Fandango, a movie ticket service that is owned by NBCUniversal which itself is owned by Comcast. Comcast is a massive media conglomerate and that should be noted that as an ISP this puts Comcast in a position to violate the ideals of net neturality to favor streaming to their own service.
4. HBO Max – HBO Max is owned by WarnerMedia which will soon be owned by Discovery Inc. after the company was sold by AT&T when the telecommunications giant couldn’t seem to get media and entertainment quite right (regulators have to approve this before the merger is final). Discovery owns a slew of media brands including the Oprah Winfrey Network, Animal Planet, Food Network, Thrillist, The Dodo, Now This, and of course the Discovery Channel. After the merger is finalized there is no telling what HBO Max will look like or other WarnerMedia assets like DC comics and movies, CNN, and Adult Swim. However, HBO Max is probably better off in the hands of Discovery Inc. and not AT&T and it makes the company one entirely focused on media and entertainment instead of massive vertically integrated behemoth.
Conclusion
Big tech companies that are near-monopolies (or actual monopolies) do have some limited competition in the marketplace, but it takes the will of us consumers to avoid using the easiest route possible and to explore our options. This will make services for everyone better, increases innovation, and improves global employment in the long run. If you are willing to do a little exploration, there are tens of thousands of online small tech business ready to win you over.
If you know of any alternative to a big tech company I should list here please let me know by contacting me via the contact form.
This article will be continually updated with the last updated date listed below.
Last updated: 02/18/2022