I Do Not Want Your Stupid App

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Jon Evans

Contributor

Jon Evans is the CTO of the engineering consultancy HappyFunCorp; the award-winning author of six novels, one graphic novel, and a book of travel writing; and TechCrunch’s weekend columnist since 2010.

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I do not want your stupid app
I will not use this siloed crap.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.
I do not want this mobile spam!

yahoo-app

Would you like them on your phone?
On your waking home screen shown?

No! And no and no and no!
I do not want your stupid app
I do not want these wares of crap.
Your interstitials make me mad!
My ad blockers will make you sad.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.
I do not want this mobile spam!

Don’t you want your content trapped?
Don’t you want your actions mapped?

Not on a tablet,
Not on a phablet.
Not on an Android on the bus,
Not on a rose-gold 6S Plus.
Let this trend begin to ebb
Redecentralize the web.

linkedin-app

Would you? Could you? If they’re slick?
Would you? Could you? If they’re quick?
You can use this app offline.
Interruptions can be thine!

I would not, could not, just for speed.
LTE removes that need.
HTML5 can cache offline.
I do not want your pushes’ chimes.
I do not want your stupid app
I will not use this siloed crap!

Say! Would you log in and register?
And would you tell us if you are a mister?
Would you approve our permission list?
We’re sorry but we really must insist.
May we track your location in background?
For we have to know where you can be found.
You can just log in with Facebook!
(Without reading our privacy gobbledigook.)

yelp-app

Not with your privacy policy,
Not with your meaningless homily.
Not with your terms and conditions,
Not with your greedy permissions.
I want content hyperlinked,
I refuse to be hoodwinked.

I do not want your stupid app
I do not want these wares of crap.
Let this trend begin to ebb
Redecentralize the web!

Here’s an offer out of kilter
Would you, if it photo-filtered?
If it let you post a Vine
If it let you share designs?
If this app let you create
Might you then participate?

bleacher-app

Say! I might participate!
My objections dissipate!
If an app is for creation
It could meet my approbation.
If it is designed for makers,
Not to monetize for takers,
If so, well then, I mean, goddamn,
I will download, Sam-I-am!

But if your app is for consumption
Do not count on my presumption.

I do not want your stupid app
I will not use this siloed crap.
Your interstitials make me mad!
My ad blockers will make you sad.
I do not like this, Sam-I-am.
I do not want this mobile spam!
Let this trend begin to ebb
Redecentralize the web!

More TechCrunch

Here are quick hits of the biggest news from the keynote as they are announced.

Google I/O 2024: Everything announced so far

Google Play has a new discovery feature for apps, new ways to acquire users, updates to Play Points, and other enhancements to developer-facing tools.

Google Play preps a new full-screen app discovery feature and adds more developer tools

Soon, Android users will be able to drag and drop AI-generated images directly into their Gmail, Google Messages and other apps.

Gemini on Android becomes more capable and works with Gmail, Messages, YouTube and more

Google’s gunning for OpenAI’s Sora with Veo, an AI model that can create 1080p video clips around a minute long given a text prompt.  Unveiled on Tuesday at Google’s I/O 2024 developer…

Google gets serious about AI-generated video at Google I/O 2024

In addition to the body of the emails themselves, the feature will also be able to analyze attachments, like PDFs.

Gemini comes to Gmail to summarize, draft emails, and more

The summaries are created based on Gemini’s analysis of insights from Google Maps’ community of more than 300 million contributors.

Google is bringing Gemini capabilities to Google Maps Platform

Google says that over 100,000 developers already tried the service.

Project IDX, Google’s next-gen IDE, is now in open beta

The system effectively listens for “conversation patterns commonly associated with scams” in-real time. 

Google will use Gemini to detect scams during calls

The standard Gemma models were only available in 2 billion and 7 billion parameter versions, making this quite a step up.

Google announces Gemma 2, a 27B-parameter version of its open model, launching in June

This is a great example of a company using generative AI to open its software to more users.

Google TalkBack will use Gemini to describe images for blind people

Firebase Genkit is an open source framework that enables developers to quickly build AI into new and existing applications.

Google launches Firebase Genkit, a new open source framework for building AI-powered apps

This will enable developers to use the on-device model to power their own AI features.

Google is building its Gemini Nano AI model into Chrome on the desktop

Google’s Circle to Search feature will now be able to solve more complex problems across psychics and math word problems. 

Circle to Search is now a better homework helper

People can now search using a video they upload combined with a text query to get an AI overview of the answers they need.

Google experiments with using video to search, thanks to Gemini AI

A search results page based on generative AI as its ranking mechanism will have wide-reaching consequences for online publishers.

Google will soon start using GenAI to organize some search results pages

Google has built a custom Gemini model for search to combine real-time information, Google’s ranking, long context and multimodal features.

Google is adding more AI to its search results

At its Google I/O developer conference, Google on Tuesday announced the next generation of its Tensor Processing Units (TPU) AI chips.

Google’s next-gen TPUs promise a 4.7x performance boost

Google is upgrading Gemini, its AI-powered chatbot, with features aimed at making the experience more ambient and contextually useful.

Google reveals plans for upgrading AI in the real world through Gemini Live at Google I/O 2024

Veo can generate few-seconds-long 1080p video clips given a text prompt.

Google’s image-generating AI gets an upgrade

At Google I/O, Google announced upgrades to Gemini 1.5 Pro, including a bigger context window. .

Google’s generative AI can now analyze hours of video

The AI upgrade will make finding the right content more intuitive and less of a manual search process.

Google Photos introduces an AI search feature, ‘Ask Photos’

Apple released new data about anti-fraud measures related to its operation of the iOS App Store on Tuesday morning, trumpeting a claim that it stopped over $7 billion in “potentially…

Apple touts stopping $1.8B in App Store fraud last year in latest pitch to developers

Online travel agency Expedia is testing an AI assistant that bolsters features like search, itinerary building, trip planning, and real-time travel updates.

Expedia starts testing AI-powered features for search and travel planning

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we look at the drama around TabaPay deciding to not buy Synapse’s assets, as well as stocks dropping for a couple of fintechs, Monzo raising…

Inside TabaPay’s drama-filled decision to abandon its plans to buy Synapse’s assets

The person who claimed to have stolen the physical addresses of 49 million Dell customers appears to have taken more data from a different Dell portal, TechCrunch has learned. The…

Threat actor scraped Dell support tickets, including customer phone numbers

If you write the words “cis” or “cisgender” on X, you might be served this full-screen message: “This post contains language that may be considered a slur by X and…

On Elon’s whim, X now treats ‘cisgender’ as a slur

The keynote kicks off at 10 a.m. PT on Tuesday and will offer glimpses into the latest versions of Android, Wear OS and Android TV.

Google I/O 2024: Watch the AI reveals live

Facebook once had big ambitions to be a major player in enterprise communication and productivity, but today the social network’s parent company Meta will be closing a very significant chapter…

Meta is shutting down Workplace, its enterprise communications business

The Oversight Board has overturned Meta’s decision to take down a documentary revealing the identities of child abuse victims in Pakistan.

Meta’s Oversight Board overturns takedown decision for Pakistan child abuse documentary

Adam Selipsky is stepping down from his role as CEO of Amazon Web Services, Amazon has confirmed to TechCrunch.  In a memo shared internally by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and…

AWS CEO Adam Selipsky steps down