'they pay a lot of taxes'

Firstly, they are 'minimising' their tax base[0], and second, is not committing crimes an achievement these days?

[0] - https://developer-tech.com/news/2019/apr/08/tax-google-dodge....

Everyone is doing it so investors expect it - not doing so would be a competitive disadvantage. A better and more permanent solution should be changed with legislation, not by asking individual companies to maximize their tax base, since this would also equally apply such a rule to everyone and not just companies under the public microscope.

The argument was: they are a great firm, upstanding, going above and beyongfor the good of society. Now they are cheating, but so is everyone elaw. Which is it?

It's hardly far-fetched that someone might not use Google (search) or other Google products.

Just use DuckDuckGo, an iPhone, and Fastmail, say, and nothing else Google offers is that prevalent that it's hard to see, surely?

(I assume we're not counting visiting a site with Google-provided ads as 'using Google'.)

January 1st, 2020 I made a vow to ditch google entirely. I would guess 99% of my searches are now done in DuckDuckGo and Yandex and have been so for the last year. I only turn to google if I have a technical search I'm not getting any luck with otherwise.