No, I think that was around the launch of the first android, right? There was some serious interest in a Linux (!!!) based phone. They were seen as a savior of sorts, as I remember it. Now they’re a place where novel ideas go to die.

That's how I remember it - they were starting down their current path in privacy terms but hadn't hit the moral event horizon yet, and they were still in that unbridled optimism phase where they were launching moonshot projects rather than churning through web service offerings. I didn't get seriously concerned about them until later (around 2014-2015 iirc) and it took until the start of 2018 for me to completely de-google myself.

I don't remember all the little details, but it was the year I started to actively avoid anything they touch, starting with their search engine. I think the main concern was the privacy nightmare.