
Replacing Google with microG - em3rgent0rdr
https://lwn.net/Articles/681758/
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616c
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...](https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=com.google.android.gms)

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?

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DaGardner
direct link to the the project homepage of 'microG':
[https://microg.org/](https://microg.org/)

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hobarrera
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.

~~~
Steltek
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 :).

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

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boznz
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.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
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

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

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
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

~~~
cocotino
Using paypal and not wallet where?

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
On App store. Check this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7169712](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7169712)

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bobuk
Looks like another aproach of OnePF: [http://onepf.org](http://onepf.org)

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
interesting. I see they have an open-source Push Notification called "opfpush"
which supports Google Cloud Messaging:

[https://github.com/onepf/OPFPush](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...

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ysleepy
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.

