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Comment by NoGravitas | Hacker News Reader

> Not only contradicts the "ditching Google" credo, but is also a useless move in this context. If he really wants to follow through with his FOSS approach he should be using Sailfish OS, Tizen, Ubuntu Touch or Firefox OS.

I kind of disagree, though those are all worthwhile projects. Running an AOSP or CM ROM with no GApps is a reasonable choice for mobile if you want to avoid Apple/Google/Microsoft services.

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It seems like the distinction is between "Apple/Google/Microsoft" and "Apple/Google/Microsoft services." My gut reaction when I read it in the article was "so... not really ditching them."

Edit: someday I'll learn how to format text on here.

Sure, by running a fork of stock Android you can certainly reduce your exposure to Google but you also "severely" limit your experience -> no maps, no play store (= relying on limited third party stores) and so on, and these are just core applications (not including Chrome, Keep, Youtube, the other "Store" applications and all the rest here). Also there is no guarantee you cut all ties with Google. I am not sure I would dare to claim plain Android does not communicate with Google at all.

The desire to avoid Google and still using Android (whatever incarnation of it) does not go too well hand in hand I am afraid.

The other day I convinced myself to flash CM 12 on my HTC One M7 without GApps. However, within a couple hours had no choice but to flash it. Open Whisper Systems doesn't provide Signal's APK outside of Google Play (surprisingly Spotify does), and neither does Pebble. In addition there is some bug in messaging that prevents me from sending any SMS at all. I'd argue that GApps is a requirement for any Android device today. Unfortunately I see the iPhone as the only smartphone where it's even possible to avoid Google services.

At least for something like Signal you can compile it yourself. They even provide instructions. So you could avoid gapps for that one with a bit of work.

https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/wiki/How-to...

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