[General Questions and Answers] unclefab:
Yep, true, and actually Apple is worse.

What I don't like, beside the fact that they hijack my connection, my battery and my ram (and I mean, not only Google but most apps), is that they create files about us. It's ok as long as we have a democracy but as I previously said I'm not very optimistic about democracy in the future, remember the infamous patriot act in the States...

For example, Google knows that mister uncle fab has a gmail account. It knows as well that uncle fab goes on this and that website and reads this or that page, buys this and that online, has this and that app on his phone, goes here or there (thank you GPS and Google now) and stops here or there, listens to this or that kind of music, watches this or that movie, takes this and that picture and so on.

Eventually they have a file about uncle fab, and know a lot about his life and his taste.

Suppose now that uncle fab is a commie and someone who disagrees with the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that he's a muslim who has traveled to some of the so called axe of evil countries (which I did by the way, that's why I take this example, but fear not for I'm no terrorist:) )

What would happen? If uncle fab lives in the States he may be in serious trouble and get invited to a nice all included stay in Guantanamo, eventhough he's not a terrorist.

Well that's just an example but seriously, what happens with all those files they gather about people? Not to mention facebook, you know what I mean, their data base is huge and includes pictures.

What will they do with those files in the event of the government turning fascist or half fascist?

I'm not a terrorist but I have some convictions and some ideas that would make me a bad guy for a fascist regime and that would bring me to jail.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a bad guy:)

But, amongst others, I seriously dislike the State's foreign policy and sincerely think that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are crimes against mankind that should bring their authors (Bush and his friends) in front of the international court. I do think as well that endeavors like wikileaks are very good ones and that their informants shouldn't be trialled.

I do think other things as well, it's my right, but under the Bush administration I would have been called a bad American and if they had caught me I would have won a free stay in Guantanamo.

During the Mac Carthy area I would have been called a commie because of my anti capitalistic ideas and would have been sent to jail.

Etc, etc...

So eventhough I'm not a bad guy I rather stay as invisible as I can, no-one knows what will happen in the future but from my point of view it looks pretty grim to say the last.

Regarding your remark about building my own Rom I agree, it's on my list of to do things.

But let's see first how the Mozilla os goes, and if the devs behind the Linux on android project manage to make it work properly for a daily use.

At the end of the day it's a matter of choice as you said, if someone doesn't like Google one can uninstall its apps.

You know, I spent hours playing with the apps I mentioned in my previous posts and I can say that no app knows my imei or my location, and that the only apps I allowed to connect with the internet are my browsers and the Yahoo app whose abusive perms I blocked.

Of course the browsers know my ip but that's all they know and I don't care about it, and if one day I did then I would use a vpn app or tor/orbot.

So I don't see how anyone could squeeze any data from me...

Oh, I just found this on the forum, give it a read:

http://www.xda-developers.com/android/say-sayonara-to-the-play-store-part-1/