Does no one else find it absurd that both corporations and governments increasingly rely on Google and a small group of other American companies simply to host critical files. This entrenches them as monopolistic, parasitical third parties, driving out competition and ensuing that they’re the only gatekeepers between vital civic and business activities.

I don’t want to do business with Google, and I can’t, because I do not agree to their terms. If governments want to shunt their services to “apps” they have to actually do the leg work and create domestic infrastructure, both the physical and software side, to support them. The current state is completely bizarre, and a sovereignty issue. Equievelant to showing up to a state-school and being barred from an education because you don’t have one of two pre-approved pens made by their favoured American partners. Why are the commentariat so mute on this topic?

Any contracts the government undertakes with private firms for software solutions should stipulate that the software is to be open source, and the derivative data a public asset. Currently private providers are getting royalty-free streams of data that only serve to entrench their economic dominance.

Foo company gets to train its ‘AI’ algorithms on a stream of state-backed data, shuts up shop in Australia, and sells its product to less developed, foreign states demanding exorbitant prices because the software is trained on larger and higher quality data sets that were derived from the contracts of modern, stable states that their competitors were not able to get.

The nature of ‘buying’ software is not the same as that of buying physical goods. It’s a different bargain, and the buyer always seems to get short changed.

Thanks! I’ve been reading about this coming for more than a year. With all my bank cards and credit cards on my phone, the only reason I still continue to carry my wallet with me is for my driver’s licence. I’ve been waiting for this day, I can finally leave my wallet at home.

I signed up no dramas, but I’m not really sure what the advantage is… It doesn’t integrate with Google Wallet or whatever like the COVID immunisation certificate did, and you have to sign up with yet another government ID.

Android working just fine.

I can’t get it to do anything on my android phone. Crashes immediately on start