Google Play Services was a hard dependency. People complained about it all the time and asked to remove it. Now they have finally done what users have asked for, and what is the reaction? "Who the heck needs this?" Well, that's how it always is.

Both your comment and the parent comment can be valid at the same time.

No doubt, but this is not about facts (I'm even sure they're both true at the same time!) -- this is about attitude.

Why would it be surprising to you that two different sets of people have two different attitudes?

The problem is, only the people who want something ask you about it. No-one's emailing to say "hey the Google Play integration is great - don't remove it!"

Then after you do what the people emailing you wanted, all the people who were silent chime in. "Wait a minute, why were you spending your time on that? None of us wanted it!"

That's why it always feels like marco1 described.

Few people use phones without Google Play Services.

Because of that, it doesn't make sense for application developers to support the use case.

Because of that, lots of applications don't work without Google Play Services.

Because of that, few people use phones without Google Play Services.

(And then people complain about the lack of open Android alternatives, or that other OSs such as Sailfish do not take off despite doing crazy things to support Android applications.)

After all these years I have never installed google services or used anything related to it. On SailfishOS I use f-droid and aptoide and some random apks from the web after using some weird websites that I'm pretty sure probably did bad things because they just go and supposedly get the apks from play store but I have no idea what they really do.

All the applications I try and that require stuff from google they just crash randomly or at some specific options. I just uninstall them or try to be very careful for them not to crash. It's horrible experience and it's not something so hard to prepare for. Some apolications handle it showing that an action can't be done and I'm ok with it, that's simple, but crashing because the services are not installed is just plain ridiculous, lazy and bad engeneering.

Once upon a time slack just worked fine, just didn't auto refreshed updates, then on one update it started crashing and currently since a while ago an annoying message appears everytime I focus/open the apllication saying that I don't have the play services despite the application working completly fine. The proper thing to do would just to be a messsge saying something like: " the app requires google services, the quality of the experience will be reduced and actions FOO and BAR will not work. options: continue anyway, exit and continue and remeber that option" in order for it to be persintent and stop being annoying. Not that hard.

I just endup not using a bunch of applications that I would like to. Apps that use maps or or try to get location will usually just crash. I never even installed Uber or tried it because I'm pretty sure it will just not work, so I didn't even try it.

microG is the best thing I could hope for, but I really tried to use it but was not able too. It requires something about signing or whatever that just didn't work after I tried a lot doing things with Xposed or what it was called. Even getting to a point where that almost worked was crazy.

I'm pretty sure the experience will be pretty similar in any other alternative OS that has to deal with this crazy environment.

And I will never get a "real" android where that thing will come installed, I refuse to. I was thinking of changing phones to some android based thing, but the support of hardware is very limited, so I'm pretty stuck. Waiting for any newer Jolla phone or any other alternative phone/OS that works.

You can actually install Google Play Services on Sailfish and it's easy to do, but not officially supported obviously.

The actual Google Play Services or microG? Last time I checked the solution was microG but it requires you to root your phone, which on Sailfish basically means you don't care about security at all.

The actual Google Play Services: https://together.jolla.com/question/30926/howto-install-goog...

It's basically just installing the APK, although there are a few more steps than I thought I remembered.

True, but still I like this kind of resistance ;)

This move is good at least from an ideological standpoint, as Google Play Services undoubtedly leaks data. Signal is of course not heavily reliant on Google Play Services; thus seems like a good solution for the most security-conscious, even if Signal is about reaching as many users as possible.

The are 1 billion people in China who have easy access to Android phones which do not have Google Play Services installed and provide no access the Play store. There are potentially more than 10 people out of those 1 billion that could have a use for Signal.

Sure, but does signal work in China? I'd be impressed if it did without any tunneling.

Last time I played a bit with Signal, about a year ago, the app was a bit fussy but functioned without extra measures. And I believe it was the sign up procedure that was a bit fussy. Regarless, though, Chinese communications controls are constantly improving, and what works one day will not necessarily work the next.

There are dozens out there. Dozens.

Hopefully the number of people who object to Google installing a webcam in their underpants drawer is a bit larger than that.

Anecdata, but make that 11! I've wanted this for months and even sponsored the bounty.

I was waiting for this so I could use Signal on my BlackBerry Z30 (running BB10 with Android compatibility), but I have since swapped over to Android as there were just too many things missing. Shame, I really miss the hub. I guess I can buy the BB app to replace it.

I'm one of these lucky 10.