Replacing Google with microG | Hacker News Reader

Replacing Google with microG

lwn.net

236 pointsem3rgent0rdr16 comments

I have started to use this for the Nominatim (OSM) and Mozilla backends on the rare occassion I travel and need geolocation when checking out maps.

https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=com.google.andro...

Do not let the reverse domain notation fool you. This is the stripped no Gapps version. I find it interesting but cannot pass judgement yet as I used it once in the last 3 months and it kind of helped ... I guess.

Anyone else have deeper knowledge/experience?

direct link to the the project homepage of 'microG': https://microg.org/

Sound like microg is to GooglePlayServices what wine is to windows.

Great effort! As of today, we don't really have any truly functional 100% FLOSS mobile ecosystem. To make things worse, even if we have, people have moved very strongly to proprietary IM networks and alike, regrettably.

Most things in tech come in waves (thin clients, h/w vs s/w speeds) and this is nothing FLOSS hasn't overcome before. A few more stories about abuses with NSA/Apple/FB/Google/whatever and OSS will be back on power user's primary devices and not just servers.

That's not to say it won't take effort. No need to get complacent :).

title.replace("Google", "Google Play Services for Android")

Google has not done anything yet to deserve my not using them. In fact I almost want to root for them considering the shit other governments and industry throw at them just for being successful.

Unless they shutdown all your accounts and you are stuck with no customer support because customer support for consumers just doesn't exist.

I know of cases where startups were shuttered because google linked their employees to corporate account and if any employee has a banned account then all related accounts are banned too.

All it takes is one multiple sign-in and google ties up all accounts.

I have been stuck with a banned android account because of three strikes rules. Their own emails was in my junk folder (Thunderbird junk)

Remember that if you are banned from Google for whatever ridiculous reason, ALL your accounts (gmail, drive, adsense, google search, google plus, android) are terminated & their data deleted permanently. It's a LIFETIME ban

Three strikes of what? Copyright of YouTube? I thought they only closed your YouTube account in that case. Or is it something else?

Depends on what. With youtube it's just youtube account. But with Android Dev or Google Drive it's pretty much everything.

My colleague had all his accounts terminated because he was using paypal and not wallet (back when Google was aggressively pushing wallet). It's a lifetime ban and he cannot access any of the google's walled garden either personally or even with his official business accounts

Using paypal and not wallet where?

On App store. Check this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7169712

https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

I don't see anyone saying you shouldn't root for them, or use their products. If your happy, have at it.

I personally don't want to use them, and it's nice seeing alternatives finally come out.

Looks like another aproach of OnePF: http://onepf.org

interesting. I see they have an open-source Push Notification called "opfpush" which supports Google Cloud Messaging:

https://github.com/onepf/OPFPush

But it is not clear to me if sending messages over GCM with OPFPush still requires the proprietary Google Play Services to be installed on the user's phone...

It's really good!

I have using it for over 6 month and have very few problems.

Google Play Store works normally. Push Notifications in WhatsApp/Telegram etc. work normally. Cell/wifi coarse location works well.

The install procedure is a bit involved, but quick if you got it.

The Google Maps API / Widget replacement is not fully featured or compatible with all Apps.

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