I think I like the direction they’ve been going in lately.

I try to use a minimum for performance reasons. My big three are uBlock Origin, Dark Reader and a password manager.

You can do that today with the FUTO keyboard lol. It uses a small language model for predictive text.

Brave Search, not because I like the company and their crypto/ai shenanigans but they have some nifty features and (supposedly) an independent index.

Fewer politics.

Funny how the free plan is not receiving any of the recently announced trash, making it more attractive than the paid options.

My stance is neutral, leaning towards negative. I think Google is still full of talented engineers who passionately want to build the best tech, but the higher ups are screwing up as seen everywhere else too. Their basis for all this data collection seems acceptable (personalization) but they’re blind to the fact that this information can quickly fall into the wrong hands, like a hacker or bad government.

I still use a Google Pixel with the stock software because of the little things other ROMs don’t provide, as well as Maps, Drive, Wallet, YT and Home. For everything else I use alternatives, albeit it’s not because of a super strong dislike towards Google itself but because I want to support the competition.

GrapheneOS has sandboxed Play Services which basically means they run just like a normal app on your device and you get to choose the permissions they get. My bank’s app works with it too (no GooglePay tho). It does require you to get a Google Pixel phone though, which might defeat the whole purpose for some.