Google is probably the most aggressive anti-privacy big tech company currently operating.

No other big-tech company goes to such great lengths to deanonymize users and make its services difficult to use, especially during account creation.

The requirement to have a mobile device to scan a QR code to verify that you're human. Reverse SMS verification, where you have to send an SMS rather than receive a verification code. You think of signing up using a VPN server in another country? The phone number you use to send the SMS from must also be from that country.

Not being able to watch YouTube videos when using VPN - without signing in to a Google account, all under the guise of "bot protection."

Gemini not working in 3/4 of cases when using VPN.

It's essentially almost impossible to create a Google account without giving up your identity, and your phone number often leads directly to your real-life identity.

I'm not sure what happened in recent years, but they definitely switched their strategy to maximize data collection and make sure privacy-savy users are pressured via technical solutions to reveal their identities.

PS. The first company federal investigators often go for data is often Google

Trying to fight it takes an enormous amount of time and energy. I carry two phones now - since I have my "privacy" enabled phone that basically has nothing on it. Email, messages, weather app and a few privacy enabled browsers. My other phone has all my "faux" google stuff on it. Maps, gmail, banking apps, my authenticator apps, music apps, etc.

Even then, these can all be tied together fairly easy, but just trying to make it harder to keep my data private is such a battle; and friends always ask me why I spend so much time trying to keep myself anonymous when in 2026 its virtually impossible to do so.

I always tell them: “Bene vixit, bene qui latuit.” (To live well is to live concealed.)

> It's essentially almost impossible to create a Google account without giving up your identity, and your phone number often leads directly to your real-life identity.

I had a Gmail account before they required phone numbers. One day, Google stopped allowing me to log in, demanding my phone number if I wanted to continue. Nothing was wrong with my credentials, or behavior patterns, or IP address, or anything at all. My already-registered recovery email address didn't help. There was no way to appeal.

I'm not willing to have my phone number extorted from me, so I sighed and accepted that I'll never again have use of that account. It remains a constant source of irritation, because it still forwards incoming messages to my home email address, and Google doesn't do a very good job of filtering out all the spam before they forward it my way.

Adding insult to injury, Google still (years later) hasn't made good on their announcement that idle accounts would be deleted. I wish they would. I'm done with Google.

> I'm not sure what happened in recent years, but they definitely switched their strategy to maximize data collection and make sure privacy-savy users are pressured via technical solutions to reveal their identities.

Every scammer, fraudster, scammer-in-training, fraudster-in-training, uses a Google account.

The first company federal investigators often go for data is often Google because that's the start of their lead into their investigation. Google needs to provide answers, sometimes by regulation in countries.

> It's essentially almost impossible to create a Google account without giving up your identity, and your phone number often leads directly to your real-life identity.

A process I've gone through a few times (though I didn't actually want a Google Account):

1) Get a new (second-hand sometimes) ChromeOS or Android device.

2) (if necessary) do a power-wash or factory-reset.

3) Do the "set up a new device" process.

4) When it asks you for a Google account, click on the "I don't have one. create a new account" button.

In all these cases, the device didn't (or couldn't, in the case of the Chromebook) have a SIMcard in it, so it couldn't link it to a phone number.

One smartphone that I bought for $20, and never (IIRC) had a SIMCard in, I think the only identity-oriented app I have on it is Netflix. I've wondered if Google links the smartphone's google account to the Netflix account (which is actually not me, but a cousin's), and whether Netflix is complicit in this linking.

> No other big-tech company goes to such great lengths to deanonymize users and make its services difficult to use, especially during account creation.

meta comes to mind? you can't even interact with their services unless you have an account, and they ban you if you don't reveal yourself transparently. then they ask you for a state-issued ID to appeal bans. seems like some great lengths to me.

Do you say google over meta because meta has a smaller footprint?

also: you can subscribe to duckduckgo ($99 or $199/year) and that gives you not only VPN access, but DDaaS - Data Deletion as a Service.

:)

(don't know how data deletion works outside of california, but I think california allows you to say "all brokers delete my data")

Gemini doesn't work 10/10 times for me.

Recently its taken over and I can't switch back to Assistant on Android. Now I have timers that run for a bit and then disappear, and whenever I'm driving and use voice to call it brings up the phone number and requires me to press again to dial.

Absolutely frustrating and I don't understand how this can be pushed as the default.

I can only assume its another scenario where they disable all the features because I'm not in the US, but then never tested it.

They also attached to a VERY HIGH NUMBER of ip addresses when you launch Chrome. Run an application level firewall and look at Chrome's behavior on startup. So many that I think they are geolocating users, even across VPNs

Age verification is pretty aggressive... recently tried creating a youtube account (google) and they require gov't id/facecheck/creditcard? once you hit age restricted content.

Meta is worse, but easier to ignore.

> The requirement to have a mobile device to scan a QR code to verify that you're human.

FWIW I've never seen this.

> No other big-tech company goes to such great lengths to deanonymize users and make its services difficult to use, especially during account creation

Dunno. Facebook is pretty ruthless and evil here as well.

> Google is probably the most aggressive anti-privacy big tech company currently operating

isnt that their only business model almost from day 1? Everyone shitting on Meta because of privacy but Google's the worst.

Have you noticed the front page article sharing front page real estate with this one about Big Tech getting in trouble for not doing more to stop scamming and fraudsters?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/14/dating-app-s...

Regulators want Big Tech to stop children from doing various things (such as access certain platforms or content), to stop fraudsters and scammers, to stop foreign intelligence operations or bots from astroturfing social media/manipulating social discourse, and so on.

Failing to so leads to inquiries, new laws or regulations, fines, and so on.

The technical solutions to combat these problems are the exact solutions that also ruin privacy for users, create friction at account creation time, require ever more draconian identity verification methods and so on. It's 1:1.

"I'm not sure what happened in recent years, but they definitely switched their strategy to maximize data collection and make sure privacy-savy users are pressured via technical solutions to reveal their identities."

It's really not any more complicated than that Governments have told them its time to start violating users privacy in order to combat these other problems.

More data = better ad sales.