Honestly, I’m glad they did the Fairbuds first. Just the XL is a little disappointing, since I was hoping for the regular Fairbuds, but I’m sure it makes sense for them to do it that way.

A lot of people aren’t fine with buying a phone that’s a bit behind whatever the newest, flashiest, highest-end phone is, but they are fine with buying headphones that might not please an audiophile, but will be perfectly good for everyone else. Especially if they can replace the battery, cables, speakers, ear cushions, headband, and speaker covers for a price that’s downright reasonable. (20 euros for a brand-new battery, for example)

This.

For example, it’s much easier to get 20 game studios’ employees to form individual unions, slowly building up more and more support within their tight-knit communities, than it is to have employees from all 20 game studios simultaneously come together, agree they want to start a union, and draw way more attention and hostility otherwise.

Obviously this isn’t a hard and fast rule 100% of the time, but the alternative is just it being too hard to coordinate across every game studio at once.

And of course, later on, they can always just merge together or form partnerships/agreements as needed. It’s getting started that’s the hard part, and it’s even more difficult when you try to start at a massive scale.

Even with Play Services enabled on GrapheneOS through Sandboxed Google Play, this wouldn’t affect it, as this would be a system-level change that only affects stock Android and OEM-modified variants of Android that are “Certified Android”

GrapheneOS would not have to put much, if any effort into blocking this.

Go to the Android developer verification site and fill out the Google Form in the bottom of the page on the right under Share your feedback.

Give any employees inside google that agree with you the materials they need to show management it’s unpopular even with developers, (even if you aren’t actually one) and give Google’s shareholders concern that this isn’t just media speculation, it’s real people with real concerns.

But that’s the thing: GrapheneOS doesn’t exist to “escape google,” it exists to give people privacy.

If it were designed to escape google, they wouldn’t create a re-implementation of Google Play Services that you can optionally install for apps that need it and regularly maintain it with every OS update.

GrapheneOS doesn’t remove Google services because “Google specifically bad,” they remove Google services because they spy on you without consent, and GrapheneOS is meant to prevent spying.

Hell, if any ROM wanted to get away from Google, basing itself on Android, the thing developed by Google would then be the problem, and they would be better off trying to make an independent Linux distro.

It fundamentally makes sense for GrapheneOS to work on Google hardware first, because Google controls not just the hardware supply chain of the phones, but also the software supply chain. (AOSP)

Supporting, say, Samsung phones, would then mean not just, to a degree, relying on Google via AOSP, but also Samsung’s hardware. Android-based ROMs can’t really benefit from trying to get away from a particular company, because it’s either Google, or Google + Phone Manufacturer that they then have to deal with. (not to mention the fact that Pixels run the best with stock android and are simply the most feasible device for a small development team to support with the lowest possible costs)