Google wants back my microphone

Dawid Laszuk published on
3 min, 421 words

My "writing" work currently goes somewhere else and have little motivation to write anything here. But, there's something that only internet can help, whether that's through actual help or simply transferring my annoyance.

In the past few days/weeks there has been some uproar about Facebook listening to us and later subtly suggesting products about which we talked with others. With these it's hard to point who is objective, so I'll paste link to web searches and I'm sure you'll find some "evidence" - Google, Bing and DuckDuckGO. Let me also suggest Reply All podcast who recently had episode on this mysteriously called Is Facebook Spying on You?. Obviously Facebook denies all of this, but they confirm having lots of information about you whether that's from you directly or from your friends.

Facebook and I are not in good terms for a long time. It's more a fun social experiment rather than actual social platform. Since it isn't on my phone there's nothing to complain about, but there's another omnipresent God - Google. Actually I have one of its branded phone with turned on Google Assistant, so it had to be there and had to listen to me.

Long story short, I removed microphone permissions from all Google services. Obviously some weren't happy with this, but I can't see how this should affect their usage. Except for Google Assistant or occasional input features, nothing should care, right? No. This is really tough break up as from time to time I'm getting vocal suggestions that are close to being commands. Google calls me to when it's safe you'll first need to use your phone's screen and tap the notification then you can let the Google App access some things on your device. This is especially annoying when I'm listening to podcasts or music.

In the beginning this would go on and on, but now it's more once a day. I don't think that it has some "time decreasing" variable build in, so it's definitely my action. More surprising is that even if I quickly unlock phone there won't be anything new to give permissions to. Also, it might be only happening when the phone is locked as I haven't had this happening otherwise.