The problem is that the alternative (Google) is worse.
It's like that with everything. "Apple spies on you more than you might think"—OK, that's bad and I'd rather they didn't, but who's better? Hell, who's not worse? And god no, not Linux, I did that for over a decade and I mean a product that you can pay for to solve problems for you, like computers and tools generally are supposed to do, not one you can spend a bunch of time manually tuning and working around various limitations and problems and still not have something as useful as Apple's stuff in actual day-to-day real-world life. I want to solve problems, I don't want another hobby of maintaining my problem-solving machine, that crap's why people hate computers so much.
No surprise it's like this, really—there are two smartphone operating systems and three viable desktop operating systems (I'm being generous and counting ChromeOS) controlled by three total vendors. Of course the market's totally fucked up.
Not that I like Google, I actually actively dislike it and hate all the anti-competitive things they did (with Android, too), but let's stay with the facts here.
This is like saying you can eat for free for the rest of your life by just starting a farm. Sure, it's possible but it's out of the reach of most the population.
I suppose the alternative AOSP rom wouldn't even have "Nearby Share" as a feature? I suppose in that case you could use some other protocol/service that wasn't bound to Google (maybe Briar?).
Google did what Apple should have ten years ago and pulled out of China when faced with similar problems.
Google has also worked on many projects in order to appeal to China's government as well.
> Because of its self-imposed censorship, whenever people searched for prohibited Chinese keywords on a blocked list maintained by the PRC government, google.cn displayed at the bottom of the page (translated): In accordance with local laws, regulations and policies, part of the search result is not shown. Some searches, such as (as of June 2009) "Tank Man" were blocked entirely, with only the message, "Search results may not comply with the relevant laws, regulations and policy, and cannot be displayed" appearing.
> Do no evil. (still a part of their public motto)
> In their first letter to shareholders, our founders highlighted Google’s goal to “develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible.” This vision continues to guide all of us at Google. We believe in technology’s power and potential to have a profoundly positive impact across the world.
Google has capitulated to the Chinese government, taken "moral high ground" via their doodles (but only when it won't offend the censors), and absolutely sees itself as a savior of mankind.
Prior to 2018, Google's code of conduct was summarized with the phrase "don't be evil."
(edit) They appear to have taken some flack on that and you can find it in their investor code of conduct again: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/
A large chunk of Apple's revenue comes from China. The majority of assembly occurs in China.
Google does a rounding error of business in China - assembly for Nest devices.
The most convincing article I found was an un-sourced piece from "hothardware" (and nothing shouts legitimacy in a source than a name like that) which says that only the budget pixel phones were actually moved to Vietnam, the high end versions are still in China.
As such, I have to assume that their production is still largely occurring in China.
I wouldn't mind being proven wrong though.
As a side note about the strawman accusation; pointing out Google's attempts to re-enter the lucrative Chinese market when the parent is using their absence to justify the position of "Google's Better" is absolutely relevant.
All through that time Tim Cook hasn't just been betting on China for manufacturing, but are addicted to the Chinese revenue. Apple is being held over the barrel by the CCP, both sides know it, and Apple are not doing anything to wean themselves off. As a result, Apple gives user data to Chinese authorities on requests thousands of times per year, and accept the vast majority of data requests [0]. In comparison, Google has given data on 2 accounts in the last decade. [1]
Isn't it pretty obvious that we'd like more companies to behave like Google in this situation, and no companies to act like Apple? Why are you trying to tear down the company that's done the right thing in this situation?
[0] https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/cn.html
[1] https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview?hl=...
Yes, Google got out (arguably, they got kicked out) of China. But their stealth attempts to get back into that market matter just as much. Because they display the current direction Google's leadership wants to take the company.
They want to take it back to China. And that matters.
Opinion time:
Wanting to get back into China is worse than having an existing relationship. Because they know the shit it will cause, the censorship they will have to implement, the human rights they'll have impinge upon, and they're ready to dive right fucking into that with their eyes wide open - ready to accept it all as the cost of tapping China's phat assets.
They can't even use the (weak assed) "we're a frog that's been slowly boiled" or the "what's capitulation to one more command" arguments.
The Pixel 6 is exclusively manufactured by Foxconn in China. They are looking to move it to India, but as of right now, it's still in China.
https://www.livemint.com/technology/tech-news/after-iphones-...
China represents a huge potential market for Google that their investors won't let leadership forget about.
> China represents a huge potential market for Google that their investors won't let leadership forget about.
China represents a huge potential market that Google investors have already given up on because no one is expecting that market to reopen to Google any time soon
At this point everything just works there, including network location provider, with only one exception - google pay won't allow you to add a card for contactless payments in most of the cases. But GrapheneOS is not at fault here.