nixCraft 🐧DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode. Is anyone surprised by this result?
I have seen this before with their forced Google+ adoption game. Users aren't adopting Google AI at the rate shareholders or C suits expect, so they now force the adoption at the cost of search engine. Just like Google+ died out, this forced AI mode in Google search is going to die and I hope it will be the end of the company as well.
A wizard did it 
🇨🇦@nixCraft Serious question: If Google dies, what happens to Android? Google effectively owns it and it shuttering the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) in September.
F4GRX Sébastien@Mustardfacial @nixCraft thats a great question and I have no answer.
I believe the existing aosp still works, i have lineage with fdroid and there is no google in it at all.
@f4grx @nixCraft Lineage, Graphene, raw AOSP with fdroid is all well and good for the nerds like you and me. My concern is more on the general public who have no idea that you can install these OS's, let alone know how to it. What do those people do? Are we just going to expect them to buy a $2000 iPhone instead? That's not really an option for a lot of people.
@Mustardfacial @nixCraft the general public does not care. facebook and tiktok come preinstalled on most phones so they have little interest for apps except banks and shit. They have no idea what a browser is so they will only use the preinstalled chrome and thats it.
Companies will register with google to make their apps and they wont care either. They already do that for apple dev.
Only power users matters. And I think we're already fine. Play store will still be available through aurora.
@Mustardfacial @nixCraft and for the rare apps that wont work without google play, we can have cheap burner phones.
@f4grx @nixCraft Yes, the general public doesn't care. On that we agree, what I am suggesting is more along the lines that if Google dies, and Android dies with it, then what happens? Does Google start remote bricking phones? Does Google Play no longer work?
For a large portion of people as long as the phone works, they don't care. But TikTok, Meta, Uber, et.al. are going to want to push updates to their apps, so how are they going to do so without a working app store?
For a large portion of people as long as the phone works, they don't care. But TikTok, Meta, Uber, et.al. are going to want to push updates to their apps, so how are they going to do so without a working app store?
@Mustardfacial @nixCraft Android is out in the wild and will definitely not die with google!
@Mustardfacial @nixCraft TBH, I dont care if people loose access to uber et al.
And also they wont, because companies will definitely make sure that the apps stay available.
SamuelJohnson@Mustardfacial @[email protected] @nixCraft Heard of RIM? Blackberry? Does anyone care now? Nothing lasts forever.
HarmonyOS is alive and well. Alternatives exit. The world doesn't have to follow US tech and increasingly it won't.
Really Lazy Bear 
@Mustardfacial @f4grx @nixCraft I was able to install custom ROMs and all that stuff when I was 12 - 13 years old. I just read instructions and of course expect bricking my phone and have to fix it, but yeah.
Still a headscratcher that technology has improved a ton but most people remain dumb with it. Idk.
I found over the years it's not really worth talking things like these to someone who doesn't really "get it" cos you're pretty much talking to a wall at that point, lol.
Still worth planting a thought in someone's head about how cool it is, but yeah.
ShadSterling@Mustardfacial @f4grx @nixCraft the phone manufacturers used to make their own OSs, and some still maintain their own variants of Android; if Alphabet stops updating Android, the phone makers will update their own forks and/or form an association to collaborate on continuing the base OS.
(They could do so anyway, if and when they decide Google isn’t serving their interests anymore, which might be more likely than Alphabet going under)