Based on issues #163, #633, and #1051, kbin currently doesn't support messaging between different instances, which will automatically mean kbin lt;- lemmy won't work. I imagine at some point in the future it'll probably get worked on though.
The advertised “regular device upgrades” will never happen for anyone as part of Pixel Pass, even customers who battled Google’s servers to order a Pixel 6 the moment they became available (it’s me; I’m one of those people) because there’s still more than a month to go before the very first customers in would cross the two-year mark and be eligible to upgrade.
So a core part of the premise of Pixel Pass (device upgrades) is being lost, even to existing Pixel Pass users.
Original marketing from 2021:
Pixel Pass brings together the latest Pixel phone with Google’s best mobile services, device protection and regular device upgrades — all in one easy subscription. (emphasis added)
Zenfone did have its 3.5mm jack and optical stabilization as relatively unique in its class (though I don't personally know much about how well EIS does vs OIS these days).
Users will keep their exisiting email addresses on this service, and would get it free for the first year. After that, there will be options of paying for a service, or an ad-based free service after that.
This makes me not understand many of the complaints?
“It’s a nightmare trying to change logins at many places.”
"I’ve got to go to all of those and say I’ve changed my email address."
Yeah, I looked around and unfortunately couldn't find that much either (except for a few specific niches).
Honestly though, if peertube semi blew up the same way mastodon / lemmy / kbin have I think most of the hosts would shut down in the process. Anything but short videos are hella expensive to store and distribute en masse compared to text + images. Video might be one of the things that can only survive if mostly centralised for now.
A number of these alternatives exist but the reality is that if a creator advertises Patreon vs advertises Liberapay (or another alternative) you get more people signing up for the Patreon because it has better name recognition / marketing / whatever. In my opinion they got to their dominant position mostly because "we" let them, and they also stay there because "we" let them.
And partly because they were one of the earlier platforms (but by no means the first option for crowd-sourced financial support for creators), and they also started with lower fees than they have these days.
Sorry, can't say that I have anything specific to suggest that hasn't already been mentioned in the comments! As the original article shows, getting a search experience that's good, privacy-conscious, and financially sustainable is evidently extremely difficult. If big tech companies continue to implode it might get a little easier to compete though.
This just seems equivalent to e.g. bing's AI search. The only thing that stands out to me are the names of their investors, not the product - they're not advertising themselves as privacy-respecting, for example.
Based on issues #163, #633, and #1051, kbin currently doesn't support messaging between different instances, which will automatically mean kbin lt;- lemmy won't work. I imagine at some point in the future it'll probably get worked on though.