> There's another angle to it that I think is more important to many - not having access to Google apps you're used to is fucking annoying, to say the least. F

> There's another angle to it that I think is more important to many - not having access to Google apps you're used to is fucking annoying, to say the least. For some Google Services there are annoying but functional workarounds, for others.. not so much: My Galaxy S6 fingerprint scanner acted up and locked me out of my phone. I didn't really remember the backup password (I was too clever by making it very unique - somehow forgetting to put it into Lastpass). I thought - no problem, I can use the Google Account password reset mechanism that I used before, right? Wrong! When you are locked out you can't change WiFi networks either, so connected to an Astrill router or corporate network that is on a VPN wouldn't have been an option. So the only option was a factory reset. Turns out that a US Galaxy S6 immediately tries to phone home to some servers blocked by the GFW during the reset process. You can't skip that step! So this is where I had to find some folks with an Astrill VPN router and connect to their private WiFi network that was tunneled to the outside world. Lesson learned: Know your backup passwords and don't rely on fingerprint scanner functionality.