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My Android device is being owned by Google Services and I don't think I like it anymore *opinion/rant*

Hi. I've been an Android user since 2009, starting with 1.6. We all had our own reasons to like Android, mine has been ease of usage and option to use whatever default app you want from the beginning. But I don't want you to bore with that, so I'll skip directly to my issue. Excuse my vocabulary, I'm not a native English speaker, so the expressions might repeat themselves across the text.

I'm tired of servicing the device that should service me.

Android never was fully featured from the start, so we appreciated custom ROMs, tweaks etc in the past. Around time 4.1 came out, that was the first version that felt to me "I'm really comfortable using this stock ROM" and have the need to tinker anymore.

It was also the time that Google introduced the holiest of holiest, our saviour - Google Services.

It was praised as an universal solution for update woes, fast services integration across different devices and versions out there and it had a modest start.

Now it's a resource behemoth.

Let me give some examples, running on stock Kitkat factory image, Nexus 5 (no, no Lollipop until they figure it out how to not screw the N5 with system memory leaks and abysmal battery drain, lets keep it one rant at the time):

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/Q8upF9K.png) - what you see here is a list of services running about at boot. Couple of Googly things, ok. But what interests me is the BrokeredFitnessService. Eh ? I don't have Google Fit installed, because it's a "project" in the current state and doesn't offer anything special, worthy of using the battery resource.

What I see here, that I don't even have an option anymore, the Services can run some components regardless of users intent of using them.

But you would say, it sure stops here, right ? Nope.

Lets move on to some other Google services apps.

We all like Google Music. But I don't like the notion of this :

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/B8tAuJu.png) - Hm, I didn't even launch Google Music on the phone. Main usage consists of using it on the PC, yet still the app had to do some work on the device and left the "door open behind it". But what is WearDataTransferConnec.. service ? I don't own a Wear device, nor did my phone ever go past one.

Lets move on to Google Search :

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/FjrtuCx.png) - sometime after the release of always listening on homescreen feature of the Google voice search, we saw this gem appearing, the SearchService. Let me remind you that I don't have Google Now enabled, since I don't find much use of it in my country and again the benefits doesn't give me enough disregarding the extra battery resources used. Same goes with the always-on voice listening, it's disabled. And yet this Service starts no questions asked doing whatever it wants.

Here I come to the most recent member of this bunch, Youtube :

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/VZsC5Hw.png) - after Youtube announced their offline Music Key service, this started to appear. I do have the Music All Access trial running, since we got Google Music recently, but we won't be eligible for Music Key. And yet this keeps running. An OfflineTransfer service for something I'm not eligible to transfer for offline usage. Ugh.

For all of those who kept on reading without madly commenting a "why don't you use X to disable stuff", I say thank you. My stance on all the tweaks, hacks is that while it's cool that someone put the effort into developing those, it's sad they actually have to exist. It's tiring always have to keep the cat and mouse game with Google updates and playing the "disable this, monitor that". It might have been fun at the beginning as you learn something, but maybe now I just want peace. As a system admin, I have other things to do, then nanny a small piece of equipment in my pocket I rely on.

Google should respect the decisions we make when opting in our out of their services/projects/products and make sure to responsibly exist on our devices regarding system resources. We all experienced a sudden battery rage, when Google Services went haywire for unknown reasons. It's like someone at the ~~mothership~~ Mountainview pressed a button and a portion of devices out there gave up their ~~blood~~ battery for the master.

As for the future, I won't wildly claim now to go somewhere else, since this will probably invoke some rage anyway. Lets see what coming months will bring. But some certain enthusiasm regarding Android has surely died in me.