You’re reading what @agger_modspil is saying, but not listening. You are trying to redefine “insist” to only mean “require”.
No I’m not. He was talking about theirs nags once you’ve logged in but my original point was that you don’t have to log in in the first place. If you don’t log in they don’t nag you for your phone number. You even quoted the bit where I agreed the phone number nag is annoying.
“Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android”
I’ve addressed this before when it happened. I’ll agree it was silly to remove that feature but it’s partly a choice of usability. If you forcibly disallow apps from accessing certain things they behave unpredictably - force closing or freezing up. A non-technical user won’t understand why and put it down to it being a “bad phone” - obviously not the UX a company wants. In any case you can do this yourself if you care to using an app called Permissions Denied (requires root).
“every time I pick up my Android tablet I get the distinct feeling I’m being watched… closely by Google.”
You know this isn’t a convincing argument. You don’t even have to give an android device a google login if you don’t want to. Obviously google’s services won’t work (including the play store) but there are alternative stores on android and you can get pretty much any app from tpb and side-load anyway.
IRT Picasa: It sounds very shitty but the main question is why are you using Picasa? Again: it’s not necessary for anything. No one has to use Picasa. Bridge is far, far more useful.
Do you really obey EULAs? Do you actually give anyone your real name when you don’t actually have to?
8.3: It’s a photo-sharing website. Pre-screening could relate to running your images through google’s pr0n filter to make sure they don’t have more shit to moderate. Not excusable, I’ll agree, but why is anyone using Picasa anyway?
11.1 is insanely broad, but is included to allow them to legally display your content on Picasa.
11.2 “available to” does not mean they can use it in the ways that 11.1 allows google to use it.
11.3 again covers their legal right to show your content on their network. You just want to use a private photo gallery? There’s tons out there.
11.4 just covers their ass in case you upload photos you don’t own the copyright for. You don’t have the “authority” to grant the above licence if you don’t own it or otherwise have legal control over it.
You’re not wrong that their stuff is invasive but you are reading these things from the perspective of Google is evil. Confirmation bias is an amazing thing. I’m not arguing that their EULA isn’t overly broad but I think if you were to read through the EULA of flickr (a yahoo property) you’d find very similar legalese.
