Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive
My cynical read of this is that it&#x27;s an attack on Facebook. Google has a giant attention platform in YouTube, but Facebook and Instagram <i>are</i> attention platforms. I think YouTube will decline a bit as a result of this, but the rest of Google - and the data collection of Android are untouched. If people become less addicted to their phones, they&#x27;re still going to have their phone when they go to restaurants and take photos of things on their phones, they&#x27;re just not going to post about it on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or Twitter. Google will still know everything they do now, they&#x27;ll still be the default photos experience and search experience and maps experience for Android, you&#x27;ll just spend less time in attention apps like YouTube and Facebook.<p>The real genius is that it fits Apple&#x27;s brand <i>really</i> well, way better than Google&#x27;s. If they can make this a serious digital wellness campaign, I could easily see Apple joining in. It won&#x27;t affect their bottom line and it&#x27;ll make them look good. And with that, both mobile platforms and ~all of Facebook&#x27;s user base get nudges to become less addicted to and pay less attention to Facebook.