Pretty much this, just run android without GMS and you quickly discover how limited it can be if you don't know what your doing.

Except that there are also a few people like myself. I am now at my 3rd Android smartphone and I have always used all of them without GMS and without a Google account and I do not feel that I have missed anything.

All the mobile phone services, camera, clock/calendar, file storage, Web browsing, including the use of anything accessible on the Web, e.g. Google Maps, all work OK, and I do not need anything else from my phone.

The very few extra applications that I have installed, e.g. an authentication app for the VPN of my company, have been side loaded, not from the Google Store.

The only problem that I have ever had with the lack of a Google account was that one of the banks with which I work has discontinued their Web interface for online banking and has mandated the use of a phone app for authentication. As their staff seems very stupid, they had not provided any way to side load their app, but it could be installed only from the Google Store.

Seeing that they cannot be reasoned with, I have canceled my online banking service at that bank and I have reverted to an older form of SMS service, which still provides me most of the features that I need, e.g. receiving notifications on transactions from my accounts and interrogating the accounts balance. The loss is theirs, because I now do more frequently banking operations at other banks, which do not have stupid conditions tied to their online banking services.

I just used a Huawei phone for like 2 year without GMS, but you and I are not 99.999 of the general phone users out there.

I used Aurora store to access the Playstore, youtube vance to play youtube movies. For the rest i only use Facebook Messenger(for family), whats app, Telegram and my banking app doesn't need GMS to function. Those messenger app have their own notification services so not completely dependent on GMS stuff. For the rest i'm more interested in camera specs and not really in mobile app ecosystem outside of those couple of apps i just need to talk with family and friends..

It is totally doable but don't think 99.999 of the phone users will take the effort to find everything out.

How did you install Google Maps though? I assume you are a technical users?

I'm also running LineageOS+MicroG+Aurora and it works for me, but 95% of the populace isn't going to have much luck doing this, which is as Google intended.

This is a shitpost.

The emails leaked a few years ago on twitter say different

Have a link? Curious, but seemingly hard to find.

What did I say that was inaccurate or untrue?

It's an off-topic complaint. Just because someone posts a link about Google (or substitute any other company) doesn't mean it's okay to post whatever complaints about Google you want. Particularly when they're the same sort of repetitive complaints people post every time. We've heard it, give it a rest.

Is it a random complaint though? How is it any different from everyone regularly warning against investing in google services because they are shut down so often? Seems pretty relevant for anyone who is considering investing in this project but isn't aware of Google's behavior with other large open source projects, e.g. Android.

Imagine if people told naysayers to shut up when Microsoft was trying to destroy Linux with the SCO lawsuits. Your argumebt actively damages the open source cause.

It’s not any different and that’s exactly the problem. Everyone is well aware by now that sometimes Google shuts down services. Been there, lived it. Writing low-effort comments about how Google often shuts down services makes the Google-related topics on Hacker News more tedious to read and you should stop doing that.

Better to share links to interesting and relevant content. News about what was happening with the SCO lawsuit was interesting back in the day. Low-effort complaints about it were not.

I appreciate your opinion, but not your commands about what I should do. I respectfully disagree - I don't think everyone is fully aware of all of Google's particular misdeeds and bad practices, and I don't think the tone around Google efforts is negative enough. My post is one of activism, not complaint.