Essay · Privacy, Culture, Opinion

So long Google, and thanks for all the nudes

Lecaro · for lecaro.me · 21 Sept 2026 · 2 min read · Written by a person

First published at lecaro.me.

Working with a pile of ancient Android 6 phones without Play Store access becomes an accidental lesson in how much quieter—and more joyful—a Google-light phone can feel.

So long Google, and thanks for all the nudes

The play store does not run on my old devices, this led me accidentally experience some joy while using Android.

I've recently aquired 10 identical android 6.0.1 phones. The plan is to equip them with some sms gateway software and ship them to some customers.

Because those phones are so old, I've had to improvise. And because I have 10 of them, I'm not too scared of experimenting. It gave me a taste of what a degoogled, compile-from-source android os is like. I'm starting to think I'd actually enjoy using that.

I'm forced to pick lightweight apps because the os only has 2gb of ram. They happen to be my favorite kind of app. I'm making my own (slop) apps when I can't find exactly what I want.

This joyful fidling comes with a big let down by google. I was hoping to publish my new game on the store and charge for it, but their review process is so broken, I think I'll stick to fdroid and itch.io.

Google is simultaneously grabbing full power over app developpers with their latest monopoly consolidating move, and botching the review process to a level I have never witnessed before.

Google never cared about my apps. The review process is humiliating, alien, infuriating. The reasons an app is rejected are never clearly explained. This has always been the case, publishing mermaid gdocs years ago led me to the start of my degoogling journey.

I tried to offer my text editor Tabby on the play store, but it was rejected. They attached a nsfw screenshot of some unidentified app. Google is litteraly sending me nudes a part of their review process. I appealed, stating that this had nothing to do with my app, and (as expected) the appeal was rejected without expanation. Someone probably looked at the same screenshot and thought, "yep, that's still p0rn"

I suspect some of the automatic app listing translations they added contained a link to some dodgy website. I'm blocked from reading the content I submitted anyway, so I can't tell.Maybe they mixed up apps during the review. Maybe they opened the wrong text file in the editor. I don't know, I can't ask anyone, and any repeat offense can lead to a full dev account deletion, so I will not try to "debug" their review process.

I no longer care. Google is never pushing free apps forward. It seems pretty clear to me that counting on google is a bad idea. I'll keep building tools and game, and share them to the people that are brave enough to venture outside of the play store.

Google, if you want the exclusive power to gatekeep apps, you shoud do a much better job of reviewing them.