This has been happening since at least a year ago. There's nothing at all about this story that raises it to the level of "news"

Satellite really isn't all that bad for some methods of working. It's the latency that's the problem so if you need to RDP or VOIP, you're out of luck. If you can work locally and upload/download asynchronously, you're probably in good shape.

A lot of the problem is modern workflow practices are geared to fast, low latency networks.

Hats off to you.

I would like for something like Diaspora to succeed but, to be honest, I haven't really cared enough to look into it much (I don't really facebook much either though).

Facebook also didn't impose theirs retroactively on a huge amount of users who had been using pseudonyms for a long time.

Sky type?

Though, of course, the Youtube one was after they *forced* me to merge my gmail and youtube accounts.

The thing too is that I already had a login that worked with gmail, voice, youtube, chat and the play store. All of a sudden I need to register for a G+ profile to be able to leave comments on Youtube and Google Play because.....

You tell me.

about:blank is the most streamlined social networking site around.

Sounds like something a plugin could handle easily. You might want to see if someone has already cooked one up for you.

It's a good job this move totally eliminated them and in no way discouraged posters with something valid to say then.

It sucks. I see a comment like "I can't use my computer because X" and I know the answer is Y yet I can't help this poor soul out even though I have a Youtube account and a couple of Google accounts because Google has a boner for getting people on G+. Too bad Timmy, no computer for you.

How do I turn off the Beta shit?

True enough. But reading that article, it seems that it's mostly a branding issue. And they may be concerned about upsetting people who have come to identify Android with Google services.

I haven't really looked into it but I believe it runs standard Android apps. Of course, without the Google services, a lot of apps won't run but that's more Google attempting vendor lock-in in my opinion.

I haven't looked into the Amazon app store so I don't know how good or bad it is. I do know that as an Android dev, I fairly regularly get contacted by people claiming to represent other app stores who offer to include my apps (or do it without asking) but I have heard nothing from Amazon so far (though I'm thinking I might try putting my apps up there anyway).

The Amazon Fire Phone is Android based but does not use Google services.