This blog has been around for 22 years, so there are definitely themes I circle back to. One of them is my strange, recurring relationship with Android phones. Even though I’m primarily an Apple user, I’ve probably owned more Android devices than most self-identified Android fans. The pattern is always the same: I buy one as a secondary device, I use it for a while, then it sits unused, and eventually I sell it. Time passes, I forget why I swore them off, and I start the cycle again. I even wrote a note to Future Scott to warn me away from doing it again.
In principle, I avoid Google services wherever I can. I don’t use Chrome, I don’t use Gmail, and I shut down Google accounts once I’m done with them. And yet, every so often, I’ll find myself picking up a Pixel or some other Android device, which of course requires opening yet another Google account. I tell myself it’s just a dabble, nothing serious.
Late last year I bought a Pixel 8. At first, I was happy enough with it. It was a solid device, smooth to use, and it scratched that itch of trying something different. But right after I bought it, Google announced they were changing how tracking would work on their phones and browsers. Instead of traditional identifiers you could reset or mask, they were moving to device fingerprinting. In plain terms, that means every Google phone and browser gets a permanent, unique tag. You can’t get rid of it, you can’t change it, and you certainly can’t hide from it.
For someone like me, who’s allergic to oversharing by default, the idea of being permanently tagged at the device level was a dealbreaker. It didn’t matter how polished the hardware was; I couldn’t stomach it. I did a bit of threat modeling on my own use case, read up on the details, and then stopped using the Pixel. A few months later I sold it. I should have sold it sooner, but it was only a secondary device and I didn’t feel much urgency. I defaulted back to an older iPhone I had lying around.
Not long after I sold the Pixel, Google partially backtracked on their fingerprinting plans. Sort of. The walk-back wasn’t enough to matter to me. By then I had already closed out my latest Google account, and I’m hoping that’s the end of the cycle. No more Groundhog Day moments of buying another Pixel, dabbling for a bit, and regretting it all over again.
For me, the line was crossed when the tag became something I couldn’t remove. Control matters. Once that was gone, so was my willingness to keep using the phone.