I’m slowly moving away from Gmail and Google Docs/Drive, but in the meantime entering this into uBlock Origin seems to help:
mail.google.com##div[jscontroller][jsaction]:has(> span > button[aria-label="Try Gemini"])drive.google.com##div[jscontroller][jsaction]:has(> span > button[aria-label="Try Gemini"])docs.google.com##div[jscontroller][jsaction]:has(> span > button[aria-label="Try Gemini"])AAAAAria to save the day!
Wanted to say it feels like Microsoft doing same thing with Copilot, but at least you can disable that. At least on enterprise plans, home / small business apperently is a different story now.
I wasn’t able to disable Copilot in Office without threatening to cancel via my account management page. It’s only then that they give you the option to fall back to the originally priced plan that specifically doesn’t include Copilot. And even after that, Copilot apparently won’t be removed from my locally installed copies of the Office apps until my plan renewal date in April! I’m pretty sure I’m gonna use the time to transition all my documents to LibreOffice and fully cancel my MS Office plan before it renews.
to be fair, Microsoft is also shoving Copilot down our throats. They keep adding unremovable Copilot buttons to Outlook.com
Oof, luckily I don’t have to use o365 at work anymore.
When AI appeared in my android text messaging app was the day I relented and installed GrapheneOS. Between Graphene and Bazzite on laptop/desktop, and NixOS for homelab/self hosted tools,.couldn’t be happier to be free from all big tech BS while still getting tech benefits on my own terms
We don’t “get” tech anymore. Tech happens to/at us. We are already getting AI generated ads. Where are the AI based ad blockers?
Google was “cool” 2 decades ago… or before they combined both monetization (through ad) with power (through monopoly) they inexorably transformed EXACTLY to Microsoft the same way Facebook/Meta did the Google playbook.
Those huge tech corporations are pulled by the market to follow the same, sadly successful, strategy playbook and keep no uniqueness.
Google has been the new Microsoft for years already but through careful marketing consumers somehow believe they aren’t.
This is probably the most ‘old man yells at cloud’ thing about me but I hate voice assistants and they have yet to work consistently enough to be worth my time.
It is completely insane to me that something simple like “Add ____ to the grocery list” has worked and stopped working nonstop for years now. How hard is that to get right? Cannot believe such a simple action is so inconsistent.
Nah dude you’re right. I have mine disabled and nuked as best as possible on my phone. I have no nest. No Google assistance puck. No Alexa. My home is not a smart home. There is a gun and a bottle of wild turkey next to my printer, and sometimes I make threats to it to ensure all my machines stay in line.
There is a gun and a bottle of wild turkey next to my printer
I wouldn’t leave a gun in the printer’s reach. The fucking thing will murder you in your sleep. Those things are the work of the devil and every day they continue to exist is a day too long.
I think a lot of that has to do with that Google used to be a company with engineers wanting to make the best software.
Now it’s an ad agency that happens to have some software to make money, and they don’t care about the software anymore. Money is not only bottom line, it’s all the lines. You see the results in the quality of their software, it’s all gone down hill.
My Google smart speaker used to integrate with my shopping list app. The loss of that integration and other features makes it basically a glorified white noise machine now.
That’s my biggest gripe with Gemini; it’s not a proper replacement for Google Assistant and yet it’s still treated as such.
Feels like Google took at least two steps back when it comes to Gemini on Pixel devices…
there is nothing forcing you to keep using google though
For now
I tried to ask it how I could remove it, Gemini told me that in order for me to help it I needed to active some of the “smart” features I didn’t have active on my account, essentially helping do the opposite. It follows the ever increasing practice of trying to shove basically illegal behavior into “it’s just the algorithm, bro, there was no intent!”
Thats nothing, the Play Integrity API is trying to block usage by other operating systems like CalyxOS and Graphene. Imo much more insidious and opaque.
Is it bad that I stopped using Google docs and plan on moving to OpenOffice instead?
Open office. Or libre office. Also. Don’t give Google your data like that bro
Why would that be bad?
Where are they putting it, chrome? Just use Firefox instead.
I use gmail at work and I see the logo in chats, email, drive, docs, and I’m not sure where else. Its annoying when I’m typing an email and it tries to get me to use it. I don’t know how to get rid of it either.
Somehow I’ve never come across any of these things in my day to day. I hope I can casually avoid them for a long long time.
That’s how it is. I never even set up Gemini when my phone updated. I never used google assistant either.
Problem with Gemini is that is sucks badly in comparison with more mature solutions.
It really is terrible. I’ve tried a dozen times to get it to do anything that the free version of GPT can do…fails every time on the few things it even tries.
