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Comment by andsoitis | Hacker News Reader

> They are losing their monopoly and are desperately trying to hold on to the net

> they are losing the control on Android

What do you mean by this and what does Android have to do with trying to hold on to the net?

I mean, there are now many other open source projects based on Android (LineageOS and e/OS/ for example) that are free from Google. If they can't control the operating system on your phone because it's free from their services, they can't control your device, track you and send you their ads... I've been using e/OS/ for 3 years now on a phone made in Germany (Gigaset). There is always an alternative...

LineageOS isn’t entirely free from Google. It relies on AOSP, which is maintained by Google, and it suffers from the decisions that Google makes. For example, Google made a change in AOSP to require location services to be installed as a system package instead of a user package, something few users know how to do. The result is that users are less likely to use something privacy-protecting like Mozilla’s location services. Moreover, Google has reimplemented a lot of AOSP functionality in its Play Services and the industry now uses those Google APIs instead of the old AOSP ones, so loads of apps won’t even run on LineageOS.

LineageOS is a great illustration of how Google is winning. Years ago I could use LineageOS or Cyanogenmod as my primary phone just fine. Now it's very hard to do that if I want to be able to use an increasing number of apps (banking comes to mind). And now I won't be able to bank with Firefox, either.

Try e/OS/ indeed ... it works for me and many others.

A huge number of people only use the internet with their phones, and Google is doing their best to tie the entire system to Google services and the Chrome browser.

Exactly. And why the phones are sold with preinstalled with all the Google software and services and it is difficult to remove them if not via adb cli ? If they are the best in the World as someone else has stated, the people will flock to install them on a "vanilla" phone, right ? All your SMS, contacts, emails, location positions, photos ... One time my mother was at a funeral at a cemetry, nearby is a cafè. 20 minutes later she got a notification from Google : "How was your experience at the cafè ?" What have this to do with their own products, their free tier levels, the freedom to not watch Youtube or use Gmail ?

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