Well I guess I’m glad I moved over to apple. But I guess the enshitification of all our phones is coming soon.

Why not throw graphene or another alternative on it (if supported) instead of turning it into e-waste?

I think the article is misunderstanding what is happening (though to be clear I think the email is at fault for that). Google is making it so that app developers can integrate Gemini better by allowing Gemini to interact with those apps. There is a menu inside Gemini where you can switch these interactions on and off (Inside Gemini, click your profile in the upper right corner and press apps in the menu).

I'm assuming from the email that this will be enabled by default which is a choice they've made and which absolutely could be argued as invasive. That being said you'd actively have to use Gemini and have it be active on your phone in order for it to interact with those apps.

Assuming Google records whatever you do on your phone whenever you do those things, which many privacy minded people of course legitimately worry about and feel uncomfortable with to various degrees, this is not really anything but another way for your assistant to do more things. If they want to read your stuff that's not really dependent on a switch in the Gemini app.

So if you have Gemini entirely disabled I don't think this is relevant. Only if you actively seek to use it and do not want it to be able to integrate with external applications will these settings be relevant to you.

I assume it's better to leave it and have it not work, then them sneak it on without me knowing or baking it into something else

Well, in this example, the information provided by the AI was simply wrong. If it had done the traditional search method of pointing to the organization's website where they had the hours listed, it would have worked fine.

This idea that "we're all entitled to our opinion" is nonsense. That's for when you're a child and the topic is what flavor Jelly Bean you like. It's not for like policy or things that matter. You can't just "it's my opinion" your way through "this algorithm is O(n^2) but I like it better than O(n) so I'm going to use it for my big website". Or more on topic, you can't use it for "these results are wrong but I like them better"

Wish it was supported in more countries.

We used it for our dev and systems groups at my former company for a while and really enjoyed it compared to anything else that was around. When it went away, we switched away to IRC due to how easy it was to host and maintain. I actually don't see a big overlap between Wave and chat and Gmail for how people use it, but I suspect that was a big part of the problem. The uses where Wave was superior didn't really catch on until Slack came on the scene and had MS and Google then scrambling to make similar tools.

I've got them both turned off lol

Its what made me buy a pixel phone.

Its a vexingly pedantic point.

Re-read the article. All this feature does is give you the ability to say 'set a timer for 10 minutes' or 'start a phone call to John'.

If you have 'Gemini apps activity' off then they won't use anything you say to train their models.

Yeah only reason Apple hasn't done it is because they haven't figured out a way to connect it all to its ecosystem.

Like they say, the Apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Android users won't have a choice after a while.

I didn't want Google Now. Uninstalled it, and it's back and updated. Been fighting for years.

What you said only makes sense if you believe that to be true.

Second that, graphene os is really nice. I have all my intrusive work apps like team, google play stuff on a separate profile and my maim profile has all the private data and contacts.
Just watch a yt for setup and follow website instructions, take maybe a few hours to set up.

There is a clarification from Google in he article that I don't believe was there when I first posted. It still by default allows Gemini to have access to things I don't want it to access, which is anything. It can be blocked through the Gemini apps activity, but I don't think that was clear in the OG text.

None the less, they claim that it will be completely offline and that no information will be used to train their models. I believe that's probably true in the short term, but I don't trust them as far as I can throw them, and I've got fucked up shoulders. I've little doubt that they will change policy in 6 months to a year so that some data is sent anonymously.

I just want it so if I say don't allow this thing at all, ever, that stays true and they don't make me later opt out of that thing.

I use it, too. Never had any problems with it.

People say this so commonly where I'm from. I was never aware that this is not the correct way to say it.

Something must have changed since I got my physical code display then, because I simply went to their webpage and ordered a free code display device a while ago.
https://www.mitid.dk/bestil-mitid-identifikationsmiddel/

Traditional search often is also wrong, showing some 3rd party website or a link farm.

With AI search I get a summary AND the result list, so I have more info to make a decision.