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I am an Android user but it seems to me that it gets more and more invasive. Everytime I go somewhere it wants me to take photos and just now it advertised some

I am an Android user but it seems to me that it gets more and more invasive. Everytime I go somewhere it wants me to take photos and just now it advertised some Play Store movie. Search asks for location access on almost every search. To get rid of the search bar I need to install third party software. When I buy a premium phone I want the phone to work for me and not the other way around. The notification bar should only be used for stuff that I want to be notified about - not ads or cheap tries to get me working for free. In the future I sometimes imagine two classes of devices: one controls the lives of their owners and one helps their owners to control their lives. What does Android want?

threatofrain 9y ago
And Google makes it so hard to disable the new Google Feed for Android, but so distractingly easy to accidentally press. Their settings experience is still a mess.
bdcravens 9y ago
I have an iPhone as my primary phone, and a secondary Pixel XL. The Pixel XL uses a separate Gmail account, used nowhere else. I've added no "Places" to Google maps. I love how it tells me how many minutes my drive to work is (which I'm okay with that on my iPhone, since I explicitly set that info in Google Maps on that account)
noncoml 9y ago
> one controls the lives of their owners and one helps their owners to control their lives. What does Android want? I think you answered your own question in the first paragraph. Don’t give google any data, other than maybe your searches. Instead of working for google, let google work for you. Only searches and in a different tab container.
cup-of-tea 9y ago
Android wants to make money for Google. It sounds like what you want is a pocket-sized computer that can make telephone calls. Shouldn't be so difficult, right? But maybe it would be twice the price if you want to pay with money and not your data.
- llukas 9y ago
  Or same price and it would be 1-2 mm thicker with resolution only slightly bigger than regular destkop monitor? Who knows...
- romanovcode 9y ago
  > Android wants to make money for Google. Pretty sure they just want to sell more ads since 88% of their revenue comes from ads.[0] [0] https://www.valuewalk.com/2017/05/tech-giants-google-apple-facebook-amazon-microsoft/ https://www.valuewalk.com/2017/05/tech-giants-google-apple-f...
traspler 9y ago
I really liked many of the Google services and lived comfortably and happy with them, Android as well. I think I went all in on Google. And it was fine until now. But now I am pretty fed up with Android and Google. The increased invasiveness and how I can't disable features that I don't want anymore or the incredible persistence of asking to activate something I declined multiple times until they make it required, really put me off. Another thing is that many of the shiny features don't benefit me at all. Previously Google offered services anyone could use. Search, GMail, Android. But now more and more services are locked to countries, languages and devices which only a subset of Google users can benefit from but everyone is expected to deal with these features. Some features simply don't work reliably at all (e.g. Google Trips and most of Google Now related to GMail, Hangouts before it got killed) and some features are pretty much useless to me as they are bound to either the USA or a language I don't casually speak (e.g. as a Swiss-German speaker the whole Google Assistant stuff is just not fun at all as I have to either speak High-German or English. Both of which is not as natural as my native language. Many Google Now cards seem to show way less info compared to the USA or show way worse data.) One benefit might be the "ecosystem" of everything working together perfectly but to me they still have a long way to go to achieve this. I think I see a direction in their messy portfolio of services, apps and devices but currently it's a terrible mess. Devices being abandoned as soon as they launch. Services migration to way less capable ones. That's not a seamless ecosystem, that's just a burden to me. So to me it feels like Google expects me to let them invade my private space more and more, give them more and more of my life even though they offer very little actually intuitively useful things. For me it has long been that what they offer is worth it but now that balance has tipped towards offering very little for a lot of me.
staticelf 9y ago
I hate the invasive features that seems to only increase with every Android update. So now I am getting an iPhone for the first time in years. > And this year’s Pixel will take advantage of the phone’s always-on microphones to listen for music (not just the phrase “OK Google”) and display what you’re listening to on the screen, even if it’s something on the radio. Like.. wtf? No! I don't want that. Sure it "only listens for music". I don't want Google to save my passwords in apps. I don't want anything of that. Get out of my life google. In the process of removing Google out of my life as much as possible. This is my progress: Completed: - Using DDG for search - Using bing maps or OSM for maps - Only using Firefox / Vivaldi for browsing. TODO: - Move email provider completely, now I am only partly using my gmail. - Move to iPhone (will soon be done) - Youtube (unfortunately I think this is hard to avoid) Don't really use any other Google service than that. I urge people to do the same.
- unicornporn 9y ago
  I installed CopperheadOS on my Nexus 5X, it has been a blessing. I use OsmAnd~ maps and navigation, Startpage for search and Firefox (and Firefox Klar) as my browser. I chose Mailbox.org as my mail/calendar/contacts provider. DAVdroid syncs my calendar with the default Copperhead OS calendar app (Etar) and the Contacts app. I use the K-9 mail app. For YouTube I use NewPipe. It suits me a lot better than the YouTube app. I can even download video/audio for offline use. All the apps I mentioned above are free and open source and available via the F-Droid app “store” that comes pre-installed with Copperhead. For the first time I feel that I own my phone (not the other way around).
  - staticelf 9y ago
    I don't want to have to change the OS on my phone to get an acceptable experience. I rather do something else with my time. But I use fastmail for mail and calendar. It works great for me. I still have like 10 years worth of data in Google Mail. So it will take some time before I can completely release that.
    - distances 9y ago
criddell 9y ago
> When I buy a premium phone I want the phone to work for me and not the other way around. You are in the wrong ecosystem then. On Android, you are a sharecropper on Google's farm.
takeda 9y ago
Agree, these behaviors are only acceptable if the phone would be paid for by Google. It's very silly that we pay $1,000 for a phone that actually helps Google make even more money when we use it.

threatofrain 9y ago

And Google makes it so hard to disable the new Google Feed for Android, but so distractingly easy to accidentally press. Their settings experience is still a mess.

bdcravens 9y ago

I have an iPhone as my primary phone, and a secondary Pixel XL. The Pixel XL uses a separate Gmail account, used nowhere else. I've added no "Places" to Google maps. I love how it tells me how many minutes my drive to work is (which I'm okay with that on my iPhone, since I explicitly set that info in Google Maps on that account)

noncoml 9y ago

> one controls the lives of their owners and one helps their owners to control their lives. What does Android want? I think you answered your own question in the first paragraph. Don’t give google any data, other than maybe your searches. Instead of working for google, let google work for you. Only searches and in a different tab container.

cup-of-tea 9y ago

Android wants to make money for Google. It sounds like what you want is a pocket-sized computer that can make telephone calls. Shouldn't be so difficult, right? But maybe it would be twice the price if you want to pay with money and not your data.

llukas 9y ago
Or same price and it would be 1-2 mm thicker with resolution only slightly bigger than regular destkop monitor? Who knows...
romanovcode 9y ago
> Android wants to make money for Google. Pretty sure they just want to sell more ads since 88% of their revenue comes from ads.[0] [0] https://www.valuewalk.com/2017/05/tech-giants-google-apple-facebook-amazon-microsoft/ https://www.valuewalk.com/2017/05/tech-giants-google-apple-f...

traspler 9y ago

I really liked many of the Google services and lived comfortably and happy with them, Android as well. I think I went all in on Google. And it was fine until now. But now I am pretty fed up with Android and Google. The increased invasiveness and how I can't disable features that I don't want anymore or the incredible persistence of asking to activate something I declined multiple times until they make it required, really put me off. Another thing is that many of the shiny features don't benefit me at all. Previously Google offered services anyone could use. Search, GMail, Android. But now more and more services are locked to countries, languages and devices which only a subset of Google users can benefit from but everyone is expected to deal with these features. Some features simply don't work reliably at all (e.g. Google Trips and most of Google Now related to GMail, Hangouts before it got killed) and some features are pretty much useless to me as they are bound to either the USA or a language I don't casually speak (e.g. as a Swiss-German speaker the whole Google Assistant stuff is just not fun at all as I have to either speak High-German or English. Both of which is not as natural as my native language. Many Google Now cards seem to show way less info compared to the USA or show way worse data.) One benefit might be the "ecosystem" of everything working together perfectly but to me they still have a long way to go to achieve this. I think I see a direction in their messy portfolio of services, apps and devices but currently it's a terrible mess. Devices being abandoned as soon as they launch. Services migration to way less capable ones. That's not a seamless ecosystem, that's just a burden to me. So to me it feels like Google expects me to let them invade my private space more and more, give them more and more of my life even though they offer very little actually intuitively useful things. For me it has long been that what they offer is worth it but now that balance has tipped towards offering very little for a lot of me.

staticelf 9y ago

I hate the invasive features that seems to only increase with every Android update. So now I am getting an iPhone for the first time in years. > And this year’s Pixel will take advantage of the phone’s always-on microphones to listen for music (not just the phrase “OK Google”) and display what you’re listening to on the screen, even if it’s something on the radio. Like.. wtf? No! I don't want that. Sure it "only listens for music". I don't want Google to save my passwords in apps. I don't want anything of that. Get out of my life google. In the process of removing Google out of my life as much as possible. This is my progress: Completed: - Using DDG for search - Using bing maps or OSM for maps - Only using Firefox / Vivaldi for browsing. TODO: - Move email provider completely, now I am only partly using my gmail. - Move to iPhone (will soon be done) - Youtube (unfortunately I think this is hard to avoid) Don't really use any other Google service than that. I urge people to do the same.

unicornporn 9y ago
I installed CopperheadOS on my Nexus 5X, it has been a blessing. I use OsmAnd~ maps and navigation, Startpage for search and Firefox (and Firefox Klar) as my browser. I chose Mailbox.org as my mail/calendar/contacts provider. DAVdroid syncs my calendar with the default Copperhead OS calendar app (Etar) and the Contacts app. I use the K-9 mail app. For YouTube I use NewPipe. It suits me a lot better than the YouTube app. I can even download video/audio for offline use. All the apps I mentioned above are free and open source and available via the F-Droid app “store” that comes pre-installed with Copperhead. For the first time I feel that I own my phone (not the other way around).
- staticelf 9y ago
  I don't want to have to change the OS on my phone to get an acceptable experience. I rather do something else with my time. But I use fastmail for mail and calendar. It works great for me. I still have like 10 years worth of data in Google Mail. So it will take some time before I can completely release that.
  - distances 9y ago

criddell 9y ago

> When I buy a premium phone I want the phone to work for me and not the other way around. You are in the wrong ecosystem then. On Android, you are a sharecropper on Google's farm.

takeda 9y ago

Agree, these behaviors are only acceptable if the phone would be paid for by Google. It's very silly that we pay $1,000 for a phone that actually helps Google make even more money when we use it.