And another great application falls victim to Google’s absolute disdain for Android developers. Marcel Bokhorst has announced that after yet another brick wall interaction with Google, he is ending development of his popular (in the right circles) open source email client FairEmail.
All my projects have been terminated after Google falsely flagged FairEmail as spyware without a reasonable opportunity to appeal. There will be no further development and no more support.
On XDA, he gives more background.
According to Google FairEmail is spyware because it uploads the contact list. My guess is this is because of the usage of favicons, which will use the domain name of email addresses to fetch info. This feature has been removed from the Play store version now.
Google has been violating EU regulation 2019/1150 on multiple occasions now by not being transparent about what exactly the problem is, but what can I do? Complain via the EU, wait five years for action while the app is being removed from the Play store?
FairEmail obviously isn’t as popular as the Gmail application or Outlook, but it does have more than 500.000 installs on Google Play (it’s als available on F-Droid), and if you care about open source and privacy, there’s very few other places to go for email on Android (whether Google-less or not). It’s incredibly full-featured and was regularly updated.
It’s sad to see rare applications like this fall victim to Google’s inscrutable bureaucracy, but I fully understand Bokhorst throwing in the towel.
Google calling out spyware. Do as I say, not as I do.
Regarding FairEmail, I did run the paid Pro version for about a week until I managed to get the old CM Email+Exchange APKs working on my G-less Pixel 6. Even as a Thunderbird email anti-outlook user for 20 years I couldn’t gel with FairEmail. Super flexible and all that but yep not for me. Not good losing another viable option of course.
The glorious world of walled gardens, in the name of “user safety”, you know… It’s to keep the user “””””””””safe””””””””” they say.
In practice it’s about total and absolute control, freezing innovation around themselves by creating more and more restrictions in the name of “safety” (while they hold all the keys that unlock doors), until everyone and everything depends on paying deference to the overlord even to take leak.
These walled gardens are the exact reason why tablets failed so miserably to displace laptops: Android and iPadOS has so many restrictions and limitations (all calculated moves done on purpose), that doing serious development jobs on them is impossible. They restricted them to toys, useless even as a glorified pager with a keyboard like a smartphone because it’s too big.
(and MS squandered his chance to make tablets their new frontier leveraging what made them the dominant desktop OS company back in the 80s by trying to emulate the business model of Apple and Google)
And this is killing open source everywhere but on desktops (yet) and servers (due their nature). Apple is openly hostile on their App Store against open source and Google behaves like a really bad government. Thus, creating a nice thing out of enjoyment for the community and love for the hobby is becoming harder and harder.
The computing world is becoming so depressing and static with these cash grab and lock-in schemes that if 20 years ago I could have guessed, I would have chosen medicine instead of computer science.
Android is the least crappy sandwich because you can at least install F-Droid or even sideload. In iOS you are screwed (you can sideload apps that get uninstalled after a couple of weeks and you need to buy a developer license for that). BTW there is still innovation out there, but you have to be careful to shop for OSes that allow sideloading. Let’s hope EU regulations fix this mess.
kurkosdr,
IOS is more like renting, you don’t own your property and you need to ask your landlord for permission to do anything.
It’s more like “Homeowner Associations” (HOAs) where you technically own your home but a private organization sets arbitrary rules about what you can do with your property. F— this and everything it represents. And yes, I am referring to both iOS and HOAs (fortunately HOAs are not a big thing here in Europe, but unfortunately iOS is).
kurkosdr,
I stand corrected. You found a better metaphor for something you “own” while someone else sets the rules.
Yea, For better or worse condos and HOAs are replacing traditional houses. 80% of new constructions are sold with mandatory HOA restrictions and given the lack of “supply” many people don’t have a choice.
HOAs are notorious for bullying homeowners. The problem is that they are blood thirsty corporations that exist to make profits and many of them have turnned to systematic harassment as a business model. They can even jeopardize ownership of a house if you don’t comply with their rules or don’t pay their penalties.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50A0QwjdV6M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxbxoZbCUTY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtfJdfiD2L8
It’s all the restrictions of renting plus hundreds in regular monthly fees in a house that you pay full price for 🙁
You should at least clarify that the app, in reality, does not upload the contact list. That’s simply what Google is claiming but the developer is refuting that claim.
However, the dev seems to be more angered by “unfair” bad reviews and lack of possibility of having them removed from the apps’ pages. Don’t be so sensitive.
Google is pretty good at spying, just saying.
Maybe they aren’t #1, but wouldn’t be surprise if they were #1.
I stopped using Google and I feel a lot more at peace. Granted, I am an Android user, I just shutdown all the Google spyware (which is pretty much “everything” Google makes).
In early 21 century, I remember that people where utter paranoid about their PC spying on them and software installing things running on background. Even mainstream publications openly discussed about stuff like ECHELON, as crackpot as it is.
Now, ECHELON is a sought after business model with wide acceptance.
The concerns of nerds are not the same as the concerns of regular folk (or even the concerns of geeks who aren’t also nerds). The whole privacy/spying debate was settled when people abandoned their Hotmail and Yahoo Mail accounts for Gmail (despite knowing Gmail scans their emails) and when they voluntarily put information about their lives on Facebook. People don’t care about privacy if they get free stuff in return or have their egos boosted by likes.
kurkosdr,
Haha, I’m not really sure which one I’m supposed to be?
Collecting our private information in data silos to be used for advertising has become acceptable. Even my significant other doesn’t care and has embraced it. Those of us who stand up for privacy are on the fringes.
Observing Google actions in the past years. Google doesn’t really want anything beyond what they provide. In regards to “offline e-mail clients”. Wouldn’t be surprised it the move was intentional.
So it’s how they handle Youtube. Not a big surprise
Just speculating here.
Google recently added a rule on accessing GMail data. An app that accesses gmail, and uses another server has to go though a third party audit:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/06/gmails-api-lockdown-will-kill-some-third-party-app-access-starting-july-15/
Put speculation hat on: There might be a new automated system that checks when an email app accesses any other server, and triggers an audit request.
This is painful to read about. I have used this app now for a few years and it’s one if the apps I paid for after only 3 days use and twice when I got a new phone. I was blown away how much better it is than k9 mail and thunderbird, all made by one person without a subscription fee. Also this app has a special mechanism that uses notification area to stop Android from killing it without using Firebase (phone home to Google)
I hope EU will severly punish Google for this behaviour.