| I have used Gmail since the invite-only beta, although I have never given out my gmail address. I only use it as the forwarding target for my hundreds of one-time addresses in use. Now I am ashamed that I still have not completed my migration away from it. I have some 30 Google accounts, each for one service I used either once or sometimes for a couple of years. Although most of them are unusable now because I cannot proceed beyond the login without supplying a phone number. Well, they have recently sent out mails that they will delete them soon if they remain unused. I did use Google search from when nobody knew it in the 1990s until 3-4 years ago when I switched to Duckduckgo. 20 years ago I would have applied to Google if they had only had a tech job in my country. I have only one Android account. I keep that phone constantly in flight mode, except when I absolutely need to use a single app for work. Today I am convinced that Google is a harmful company that the US government should split as they did with AT&T. And as a European we should not send any data to the US because of what Snowden have taught us and the US government does not grant data of foreigners any protection. Advertising is 95% an unethical business. Using the computation power that Google wastes for it in the cloud and at the edge is just evil. Overconsumption is a fact for large parts of the planet. Trying to sell more is wrong, we need to live with less. Myself by my own choices I took a 30% salary cut twice in my career. And I am still on the overconsumption side, even if the phone I type this on is 9 years old and my main phone more than 5. |