Is there a petition for antitrust charges against Google somewhere? I’m over the duopoly. Both options suck.
This reminds me that i wanted to unlicl my bootloader on my phone…
I just went into my settings after reading this article (and getting a bit frustrated that it was a wall of text with no clear instructions right up front).
I did a search in settings for “gemini” and found the Gemini settings. There’s no clear ‘off’ switch. But there’s is an option to switch back to Google Assistant. So I did that. And not when I search for Gemini in settings it urges me to enable Gemini.
I’m taking that as a good sign that I’ve disabled it permanently. Thought I’d post this info in case it helps someone else. Or so if I’m incorrect somebody else can correct me.
While I wouldn’t assume anything is permanent these days, I’d agree for the moment. I had already uninstalled Gemini on my phone (2ish months ago) and just verified I still see Google listed as the default assistant.
AICore under all apps. Disable and delete files. Done.
Hey Folks, we have “AI” for you and you will use it, whether you want it or not…
Gemini? I don’t have Gemini in my pixel 8a, stock
Laughs in Graphene
Google: Laughs in “Everybody else you communicate with who has that shit enabled”
Sadly true in any situation that requires talking to anyone else.
Not a day goes by that I don’t regret installing that on my phone.
This… Except for contactless payment.
I used graphene for a month. It was lovely. Even things like banking apps worked.
I don’t care about absolute privacy, but I do care about controlling my privacy. Grapheme gave me that.I had only 1 issue.
Contactless payment.
It’s extremely convenient to me, from public transport to groceries. I just bop my phone.The fact that Google has that locked down surely violates some EU laws. But I’m sure they wave away the laws because of “financial security” or some other bullshit.
As if bank card NFC/contactless doesn’t suffer exactly the same issues.
I looked into some “graphene contactless payment” type systems or workarounds, and I couldn’t find anything that would fill the gap.Try Curve Pay. Just learned about it yesterday. I added my credit card and it just works. Couldn’t be happier.
Looks awesome, but unfortunately seems to only be for the UK and EU. I wish the US market would get something similar.
I’m always nervous about fintech companies. Maybe it’s time to get over that and give curve pay a spin.
The cashback seems nice, considering a lot of shops I use are on there.Unfortunately the reviews on Trustpilot and posts on Reddit make it painfully obvious that their customer service is basically nonexistent. Combined with the typical random account-closing most fintechs are known for, this is not a reliable option.
Looking at this comparison, iCard might be an option if you desperately need a way to use NFC payments on your phone. Reviews are good, but it appears to be a prepaid system. Lots of fees to get lost in, too.
But old school might be just fine, too. I just realized my card does fit into my phone case!
Do you trust them? The Curve sub is full of people complaining about fraudulent transactions. Kinda makes me afraid of unlocking my card lol.
I haven’t really put much effort into researching before I downloaded the app. What do you mean ‘fraudulent transactions’?
Worst case scenario; I’ll have to request a new credit card. Not too much of a hassle in my mind.
This may seem like a silly solution but maybe pop your debit card inside your phone case. It should bop through it.
Yup, true.
But contactless via a phone can have no limit.
Adding a debit card to phone case means the upper limit is £100. Which is actually fine, and is the limit I have normally set for phone contactless. But I can instantly remove that limit via my banking app.And the phone needs to be unlocked to make a payment.
Do if I lose my phone anyone can charge £100 to the debit card.Yeah, all fair points. I do love the convenience of using my phone to pay too in fairness.
"The fact that Google has that locked down surely violates some EU laws. But I’m sure they wave away the laws because of “financial security” or some other bullshit. "
I don’t know as much as I’d like to about the regulatory side of this, but I know that Google and other big tech have done a masterful job of proactively building themselves into systems such that taking action against them is difficult.
I think that’s part of why the US antitrust case against Microsoft a few decades ago fizzled out into nothing — even though Microsoft was deemed to have been a monopolist, the big question was how do we remedy that in a way that isn’t going to be harmful? The consensus on this amongst people who I respect is that the results of the Microsoft case was woefully insufficient and something that helped to lay the foundations of the big tech dominance that we see today.
It’s not necessarily a solution, but my Garmin watch can still hold some of my cards, so I don’t need the NFC payment on my phone to duplicate that functionality. Do you wear or carry any other devices that can stand-in?
No.
I tried a smart watch for a week or so, and hated wearing it.
Hadn’t worn a watch in 20 years, and it felt very strangeFair enough. I was in that camp for a decade or more myself. I hope you find a solution!
That is literally the only thing keeping me from installing Graphene on my phone.
I use a smart watch for contact less payments ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I was hesitating due to this as well, until I realized that my payments are something I want google to have data on least of all. So I got a debit card and turns out it is no inconvenience at all.
Why? Curious.
What I’m curious is what kind of ball are you shaped like?
A golf ball? With divots all over your skin? A basketball? Just round? A baseball? With stitches all over your skin like later years Chucky? A football? Are you Stewie Griffen? Testicles? Wait, are you saying your whole body is one big testicle? Oh my god, the Iron Shiek wasn’t speaking broken english! He was just talking about you!!! “I hit him right in the ball this big!”
Lol! ❤️ run on rants.
And I used to be quite overweight with a large gut. My kids used to say I was 19 months pregnant. The weight is gone but I kept the name.
I installed GrapheneOS for the security and lack of Google. I didn’t know it was a very nice stock Android without any crap. I love it.
My experience with Gemini:
Hey Google, set a timer for 5 minutes.
Gemini: I’m sorry, I don’t understand.
WTF is the point of it then?
Imagine taking away the only useful feature of a voice assistant 💀
My recent experience with my phone is I tell it to set a 5 minute timer and it sets one in the fucking Google search browser, and if I page away I lose the timer.
I just use the timer on my microwave, I suppose the kitchen is the most likely place you’d want a timer. Unless you were using 5 minute epoxy.
When I first got into Android (I miss my Nexus 6 T.T ), it felt like I could do so much more with my phone than I can now. I had so much cool automation shit that leveraged stuff like Google assistant voice commands, but now it’s shit on so many levels. It goes beyond the user facing side of things; I used to use the app Tasker for a lot of the automation stuff, and over the years, it seems like the dev has been climbing an uphill battle against Google gating off functionality, and generally making things opaque and difficult for developers.
Your chats are saved in your account for up to 72 hours, whether Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.
https://myactivity.google.com/product/gemini
I wonder how long before AI services are added to ad blockers and VPN privacy controls.
Bwahahahah
I locked that shit out fucking day one. Fuck Gemini.
Doesnt Apple also do this with Siri and basically every app unless the user untoggles it?
Yes, for the amount of hate Google gets… Which I think it is fair to be critical of any product that compromises privacy… I recently tried helping my mom clean up her iPhone, and seriously like 100x worse. Almost everything you do on Apple demands you have another Apple device. One of the worst experiences I’ve ever dealt with.
Isn’t there some form of sampling bias here though? The kind of people who generally would care about these things likely also care about interoperability and would be on Android. I wouldn’t be surprised if iPhone users simply don’t care if Apple demands them to do anything.
Kinda sounds like you just don’t know how to use an iPhone.
Absolutely not the case… I sense a bad case of Stockholm syndrome.
Because i think cleaning up an iPhone is easy?
Except Apple has better marketing, and is primarily marketed for those who’re excited for every tech “innovation”.
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LineageOS
Anyone know if this is happening outside the US and if it is whether it’s happening inside the EU?
Yeah, this seems like an easy lawsuit in the EU tbh
I’m in the UK and today I got asked whether I wanted to leave this on or not - it just notified me and asked me to confirm my consent.
So I think this article’s headline is slightly misleading - Google is actively informing users and asking them to confirm their consent.
That’s good. I haven’t had anything though, hopefully saved by the EU.
I live in Finland using Android on a Nokia and I can switch Gemini off completely and choose to use the old Google Assistant instead. It did initially appear out of nowhere when they patched it in, but I could immediately turn it off with the same prompt that the other guy also got.
If it’s unavoidable it seems to be an US only thing atm.
Opt-out by default in the EU I’m fairly sure.
You can check here: https://myactivity.google.com/product/gemini
I just removed gemini from my phone.
me too and then it somehow popped up in messages which I had to “turn off” separately. removing AI from an Android phone is an illusion.
Make your next phone a Pixel and load GrapheneOS onto it. Problem solved.
Pixel stopped publishing device trees since a few weeks ago, it will be significantly more difficult for the devs now to continue maintaining it.
I would already do it now if not for banking apps
I’m not signed into a Google account on my phone, am I safe?
Go to Settings --> Apps
Find “Gemini” and tap into the app page and tap disable
If you can’t find Gemini, you phone probably didn’t get the Google Play System Update yet, so check the app list when you update next time. (Or you can refuse to update, but outdated android comes with security risks)
Mine is already disable for some reason. Maybe I did that a while ago and forgot about it.
Mine apparently didn’t, but it’s an older Samsung. Like, micro-USB era. I’d be surprised if Google ever autoinstalls Gemini because of the age.
ADB tools —> remove google services and other spyware apps —> oops, you bricked your phone
I swear, whenever I try to use it, it just makes me wish I could delete it. I ask the answer to a simple question and it gives me a whole essay on how this one aspect of what I said is more nuanced than one would imagine, and I’m left there waiting 5 minutes to get it to say anything of substance, but it doesn’t when I explicitly tell it to “just give me the fucking answer”, which I have to say every time for it to say anything useful.
It also doesn’t work with timers or anything actually useful and I doubt it’ll get any better with third party app access.
Google assistant was so much better, it even still works with its servers being down (for me at least) because it’s a better assistant than whatever Gemini is supposed to be.
Remember when iPhone was the bad guy amongst these kids? But I guess as long as it has more options, surely it’s better!
