In 2025, Google gave Amandla Thomas-Johnson's data to ICE without giving him the chance to challenge the subpoena, breaking a nearly decade-long promise to notify users before handing their data to law enforcement.
Banks, payment apps, many apps that shows google maps in their ui breaks without play service. Some use it to auto read verification SMS. Countless more… Google won!
WhatsApp does not need play services. It may be necessary for cloud backups and stuff…but you can do local backups instead… Play service is not a hard requirement.
how is microg these days, btw?
honestly why does one even need google services for? eveyrthing works fine without it in my experience
Banks, payment apps, many apps that shows google maps in their ui breaks without play service. Some use it to auto read verification SMS. Countless more… Google won!
people needs to understand that they don’t need an app for every damn thing.
whatsapp forces me to, and over here whatsapp is sadly mandatory.
some innocuous apps from aurora are even forcing me to have a logged in play store now. these i can avoid for now.
whatsapp works fine in my experience
WhatsApp does not need play services. It may be necessary for cloud backups and stuff…but you can do local backups instead… Play service is not a hard requirement.
i’m gonna disable it again, but last time it refused to work without it and kept throwing errors. notifications didn’t work either.