First off, I don’t think every single one of Google’s decisions regarding Android is good. Hell I actually think they’ve blundered too many times to count when it comes to bringing new features to Android. That said, for Android to mature further, it really needs to go the “it just works” route that Apple’s been nailing.
Things like how you’re required to have a Google account to really use an Android phone at this point, and how features like Nearby Share rely on Google accounts garners a lot of hate from the FOSS/enthusiast crowd. And I get it. I really do. That said, I’ve worked in IT long enough to know that the enthusiasts will find ways around restrictions like this, or they’ll simply find another open source app that does the same thing. The average user on the other hand, almost certainly has a Google account, and for that person, this implementation makes sense. You log into one account and can see all your devices? That’s about as good as it gets.
Notice how it’s gotten progressively harder to install apps from external sources over each iteration of Android? Yeah that sucks, but for the average person, that’s stopping them from installing malware disguised as an app. They don’t care that there were obvious signs that the source can’t be trusted, the fact remains that they found a way to brick their Android phone, while that wouldn’t have happened on iOS.
Ever notice how people say Android’s just “too confusing”? That’s the crowd that Google is trying to win over. We already use Android, and probably will continue to because what other option is there? But emulating what iOS does well and bringing that to Android is going to bring in more people to the OS, and ultimately that’s not a bad thing.
I don’t think these are FOSS enthusiasts. They’re people that want free stuff without putting any effort into it. Big difference. The real FOSS enthusiasts would simply build their own competing implementation based on the open source version of Android AOSP. Amazon / Microsoft / Huawei have exactly this to varying degrees.
Agree. Foss enthusiasmus are buzy with the Foss stuff instead of hating some proprietary things (unless these things intentionally break their Foss stuff).
I mean, Google’s nearby share (and the Apple equivalent) are just worse versions than Syncthing.
We already got a competitor that’s better. Set it up once and it’s done. Regardless if you’re near or not, or have a Google account or not.
And yet you can feel that all Google wants to do is break the service.
That’s not the use case for those features. Syncthing synchronizes files between devices. If I want to send a photo or file to my friend, do I have them log into the same account and then synchronize all my files? Obviously not.
Whelp. Guess my mind didn’t even go to that use case. Was just thinking about my personal devices
These are two different functions for two different scenarios.
3pp versions of nearby share exist for many years. People can use them if they do not like Google’s implementation.