There is an absolutely unprecedented shift going on as we speak, one of those groundswell events that have the potential to shift usage habits of hundreds of millions of people.
We got a taste just recently with the shift away from WhatsApp based on a TOS update. Imagine arguing last year that ten million users would jump ship based on a TOS change?
Matrix, and services of its ilk, are absolutely an existential threat to Google in the next 20 years.
Don’t forget that Google has all the threat intel you could possibly imagine from their existing analytics platforms. They will see the shift coming before anyone.
I can absolutely see them acting now to try to disrupt the initial rumblings of a seismic event that has the potential to go totally viral and popular sentiment shifts against megacorps.
Killing them gets exponentially harder over the next 6 months if there were a successful campaign across the internet to switch to these services, and 2021 is very close to seeing a very significant grassroots campaign like that truly take off. Certainly the time has never been better and the populace never been more primed to make the move out of the walled gardens.
How is Matrix a threat to Google?
In their world view, every single minute per day spent looking at screens that don’t have Google ad targeting is a minute that a competitor is stealing value from Google.
A matrix user identity will eventually compete with a google account.
When google accounts are considered as important as myspace accounts, then much of their surveillance loses relevance.
Conjecture on my part: it's a threat to the ad spend Google gets from Facebook.
https://www.fastcompany.com/4032442/its-still-pi-day-so-we-d...
And yet...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/google-faceboo...
An NSL would be handled a lot differently than removing an app from a single app store for sexual content. Every indication so far points to it being a mistake by Google.
From less than a week ago: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/01/googles-bots-decide-...
But if you always discount such events as coincidences, you risk remaining blind to emerging patterns.
You can view child porn on Chrome, or receive it by email, or download it by Torrent. Yet I don't see anyone banning web browsers, email clients, and Bittorrent client.
The point is that this is well explained by something other than conspiracy.
But why? Matrix is tiny and no threat to Google services.
I'd personally expect three letter agencies to be involved here. The US government has been aggressively going after encrypted communication for years, with extreme tactics like personal intimidation and secret courts. Read this story about a secure email provider if you doubt it. [1]
This doesn't work so well with EU based companies, even though they have been pushing EU governments to do the same. (There recently was a leak that the encryption ban currently discussed in the EU parliament has some roots in Five Eyes efforts and that governments were pressured by the US to support it. Published by FAZ or Sueddeutsche, I'm trying to find the article...)
I also doubt that iMessage and What's App gaining "backdoors" to their encryption is purely motivated by user experience.
At a time where a lot of people want to switch communication platforms, nipping any such efforts early might well be viewed as important.
"Abusive content" is a convenient excuse that can be arbitrarily applied.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-the-...