I am not sure what the author meant, but all my smartphones have escaped 'Google-ification' in the sense that I do not have and I never had a Google account. T

I am not sure what the author meant, but all my smartphones have escaped 'Google-ification' in the sense that I do not have and I never had a Google account. This has created mostly minor problems. The most serious has been that one of the banks that I am using has discontinued their Web-based online banking services, which I could use with a browser from any desktop, laptop or smartphone, replacing them with inferior Android/iOS apps. I no longer use Apple devices and for Android the bank has refused to provide their app by any other way except the official Google store, to which I cannot login without a Google account, despite the fact that the app is free. Fortunately I use several banks, so with that bank I have stopped using most of their services. For their services that I still use, I use their ancient SMS-based interface, which continues to work for now. I believe that it should be illegal for a bank to condition their services by the customer having to enter a contractual relationship with a third party, which moreover is located in a different jurisdiction, i.e. USA, while both the bank and the customer are in the EU. However, I did not afford to spend time and money to investigate the legality of the bank's actions.