[scrollaway]

Can you explain to me why that's a distinction?

If anything we're talking about frontend JS code that can be blocked by most adblockers/tracker blockers and thus will never touch your data, rather than the uncircumventable "your data is hosted on Google servers".

And the latter does raise alarm bells for a tiny minority, but why would frontend be worse in that aspect?

[gbear605]

With frontend code, it’s code running on your machine that you can’t personally audit written by a company you don’t personally trust. For some situations (enterprises) and people (FOSS enthusiasts, paranoiacs), that’s not at all okay.