Well, well, well. I was looking through some old pictures for something else, but I stumbled upon some screenshots of texts from the repair shop owner and the franchise’s partner relations rep, passing on threats from Google.

All I did was bitch (in a closed, private Facebook group discussing repairs) about how screens for the latest device were impossible to get through official channels for over a month, and how we weren’t allowed to use third-party parts (fair enough), but third-party shops had zero issues getting the same part from their suppliers. We had pissed off and disappointed customers, and I was getting pissed off about it too.

They have really thin skin, and should not be trusted.
And as I mentioned in the CW, this was before we had to sign any sort of NDA while working there.

@maddy what the fuck.

Just goes to show I haven’t been able to shut the fuck up for quite a while lmao.

@bearmine This scared the shit out of me, but I’m so fucking glad I saved something from back then.

I’ve never had issues like this working as an authorized Samsung or Apple repair tech, and talking shit about them when they do dumb shit.

@maddy that’s so infuriating! corpos have far too much power

Anyway, Google being petty and evil is nothing new. They’ve been chasing that iPhone vibe and customer base for a long time, right down to the details of building a walled garden…

@maddy I have a friend we trusts google more than apple and I will never understand why.

I'm not saying Apple is all perfect, far from it, but Google is such an evil horrible company at that point.

@maddy the bad parts of apple (the walled garden) minus the good part (objective C and the NeXT derived tools that macos has)

@maddy Understandable, IMO. That's not your fault that they're special snowflakes who can't take an ounce of valid criticism.

@maddy fucking mafia, minus honor code and cool style

tl;dr - Search corp has very thin skin, will happily throw their weight around to silence discourse they don’t like, Pixels are mediocre hardware, and they don’t deserve your money.

Still mad that they bought HTC just to force them to make shit hardware.

@maddy im having a hard time finding a good value android device that isn’t a pixel though >~<

Oppo killing cheap OnePlus devices has really made me sad.

@katiekat Yeah, I constantly see Pixels on a fire sale through carriers, and I refuse to entertain those offers.

The lack of good value devices is a huge issue. Your options are shit, or a turd.

I stopped trusting OPO and Carl Pei after the promise of an Android Nougat update for the OP2 was broken, and prices of their devices overall trended upward.

Because of Carl Pei’s association, I’m not trusting “Nothing” either.

@maddy And for updates really your only option right now is Pixels for reliable regular security updates.

So I’d rather fire sale buy or refurb buy a Pixel and GrapheneOS it. BUT recently that Motorola GrapheneOS Partnership is realllllllllllly interesting.

@maddy That's why I bought a used Pixel, lmao. I'm not giving Google $1000 for a mediocre phone.

I opted for a Pixel 8 Pro for the camera and the unlockable bootloader, tbh. If the other major manufacturers allowed that again, I'd gladly buy something else.

Been eyeballing Motorolla opting to offer phones with GrapheneOS installed from the factory, though. I seriously hope that's not fake news.

@foxyloon Well, Motorola officially announced the partnership. What that means for their devices and the software that’s pre-loaded is not entirely clear yet.

@maddy I'd just tell them to fuck off and criticize them (mentioning their threats) even more publicly. If it causes a Streisand effect maybe they'd learn not to use threats to attempt to suppress criticism.

@noisytoot I needed that job more than ever back then, having just moved cities. I was too scared to do anything other than keep some private screenshots and fall in line. >.<

@maddy I'm hoping for the best, especially with the GrapheneOS devs being adamant about not having Google Play services baked in.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of how said dev team shits on the other FOSS Android projects, but they're the closest thing we have to a secure OS on Android at the moment.

@maddy @foxyloon Hopefully it means they’ll drop all restrictions on unlocking the bootloader and make it work like on Google/OnePlus phones (fastboot oem unlock/fastboot flashing unlock).

Unlocking the bootloader on Motorola phones requires using an online service (bad, since they could choose to shut it down at any moment, as LG did) and agreeing to a likely illegal and completely unacceptable set of terms and conditions that includes the requirement not to sell your device and also kind-of a death threat.

@noisytoot @foxyloon Yeah, I really don’t have high hopes.

@maddy @noisytoot "Hope for the best but expect the worst" is a philosophy I've lived by for many years.

I'm remaining hopeful, but will act accordingly once concrete info comes out.

@maddy wtf?!

@maddy
>you need to pull out
🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨