Im surprised you manage to be a heavy Keep user — i had a few thousand notes, and then they rolled out some update that meant they would all be re-downloaded every time i opened the web client, which made it unusable for me. Switched to apple notes because why not and havent had any problems since.

Google Keep is at least now a core G Suite service covered by their terms of service, SLA, etc for G Suite customers. It also just got integrated into the new Gmail UX. So that's unlikely to vanish too quickly.

Youtube is even more fun if you don't want to make a channel. They've made the website "add to playlist" button redirect to the channel creation page. I can't even put things on "watch later", the one playlist youtube has deigned to allow me to have.

> The add playlist button now defaults to your last playlist, which for me 75% of the time is not the playlist I want.

You can hold the button down ("long press") to get the playlist list instead of waiting for the popup to appear and pressing the button. It is of course still worse than it was before.

Problem is that it defaults to the last playlist I added to, making it unpredictable and inconsistent. It might make more sense if it always defaulted to "Watch Later" but still prompted to change it.

I only have around 5 playlists anyway (basically variants of "Watch Later" but sorted into vague categories).

One “issue” I have with Keep is there is no way to list notes or search notes without a label. And it’s from a search company. It must be hard for them to implement:-) or there is no more resources on Keep, waiting to be out like Inbox.

There are two good youtube clients on FDroid. SkyTube allows you to subscribe to channels without having a google account. Neither has ads.

There are a few glitches, but nothing you can't live with.

The way to use YouTube is as nothing more than a video hosting site, watching videos and managing playlists through other (offline) means. I wrote some shell scripts to do this years ago on my HTPC.

I'm not alone in this; others have made far more polished applications like https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube

A scan on Bluetooth (although N/A for this situation) can't possibly give away any position. A scan of wifi might, if the device happens to pick up a wi-fi source that Google has already collected (by some means). Still not very relevant though - it would mean that location permission would be needed in order to use wi-fi at all, because how would it otherwise find the hotspot or access point you want to connect to.. other than having to enter the SSID manually every time. But we don't have to enable location tracking to do that. To configure Chromecast though, 'google home' (which replaced the 'chromecast' application or whatever it was), takes you to Settings and unless you turn on location tracking it refuses to look for the dongle.

Disclaimer: I myself am an employee of Google, but my opinions and views do not represent those of Google in any way.

Just to be completely fair, there's a balance to be had. I think Googlers are a very passionate group about many issues. That doesn't mean they know what's best for the company or the world.

If Googlers lead Google's business decisions, I think it would be a worse place. Firstly, developers are often very blind to privacy issues left on their own. Well-intentioned developers can cause a lot of trouble, as you can see from countless startups. Secondly, I think the realities of running a business are much more difficult than people want to believe, and sometimes you make tough decisions nobody wants but are truly in the best interest of the company.

To be fair I still do not agree with everything I've heard Google doing in the news, but those are outliers. The narrative given by blogs and media sometimes (maybe even unintentionally) makes everything feel like a giant scheme, but I'd advise you to apply Occam's razor as much as possible. The people making the decision you don't like could legitimately just not understand what the "big deal" is. We don't always have the necessary context to really judge something, and our inclination when filling in gaps rarely likes to be kind. The Chrome login fiasco is a great example of good intentions that went over poorly with people.

I try to stay neutral as much as possible when looking at issues, be they from Google or other entities. People make mistakes and misjudgements all the time, and people assume malice far too often it feels.

edit: full disclosure, ex-Googler. I am biased. Met a lot of people who look the other way until even the other way is salty. "I build Google Forms, I do not wrong" ... It is easy to believe you are doing good for the world when you forget your product helps the company take over the world. Again, biased and salty myself

Lol you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Googlers get into an uproar over _everything_. The flipside of which is that all of the issues that you're incensed about (like this one), you can pretty much guarantee that they're more incensed about. Not that leadership listens always or even often...

I call them "how do they stay in bussiness if they don't do anything?".

Basically all those shops that never have any customers, yet pay thousands in rent.

(They are fronts for money laundering is the answer!)

Do you have more information on this? I would be interested.

Google died when Smith said you have no privacy now[0]. Well I have no Google now. Fallback almost never used.

[0] can't find actual quote, did I dream?

Quoth: “We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about”

>Google has been considered "evil" by the tinfoil hat crowd for quite some time, and once again it has become apparent to the mainstream that they were right

it's almost as though the people with money benefit from marginalizing the people cynical enough to understand what they are doing.

You know, I used to think times like this when us conspiracy theorists could say "I told you so" would make people rethink some things, but that has proven to be false. I was ranting about NSA and other unconstitutional abuses before Snowden and was getting called "crazy", and then after Snowden the majority of comments around here became variations of "Well, are you surprised." and "If you have nothing to hide" and "Broken clocks are right twice a day"...

Google, like facebook, was from origins designed to end up this way. It was not some organic complication of motives due to massive growth.

Relevant reading: https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...

I feel like this is bigger than just Google. It seems like all of Alphabet is tending in that direction.

I guess that may be right. This is what you get when you put an MBA in charge of anything you care about.

Unlock and commnd the google assistant via a bluetooth device. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't, sometimes it would unlock but then be unable to respond to subsequent commands. Then every few days, the feature would disable itself and stop working entirely (via voice or bluetooth) and have to be set up again.

The first support person showed me how to clear the application cache, and then walked me through the process off testing the bluetooth. I was very impressed. I hadn't actually intended to request support - I was just using the device's help system.

Except - it happens again, two days later, and clearing the cache and setting up the voice assistant every couple of days isn't much of a solution. I didn't expect a fix - mainly wanted them to let them know the solution wasn't working.

The second support person had me walk through the basic diagnostics and then tried to give me reasons why what I was trying to do wasn't possible. First, it wasn't possible at all, then it became impossible to do with all my specific bluetooth devices and finally, it became impossible without using google bluetooth gear. (I misspoke previously - these actually do exist).

Pushy, inexperienced, untrained and unsupported. And very clearly miserable and under the gun.

There's a difference between "serve ads next to web search results" and "harvest literally every data point we can befuddle or coerce people into giving up."