On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 10:47 AM, freebirds@fastmail.fm wrote:
Google requires a cell phone number to register for gmail.
No they don't. I was able to register a new gmail address without providing them my mobile number. (this was in an incognito window in Chromium, from a shared IP address with thousands of Google accounts users behind it, so there's no obvious way to tie the newly registered account to my actual identity.)
Holy crap. I wasn't aware that Google was storing my location history. This means that Google knows where my girlfriend's and several of my friends' houses are. I'm disabling that right now and deleting all my location history.
That said, I can understand why the linux-sunxi project chose to use Google groups and github for code hosting. Using gratis services removes the burden of hosting their own git repository or mailing list, and lowers the barrier to entry because millions of people have Google and github accounts already and may not want [ugh] an account on one more service. I've experienced this myself -- I used to have several email accounts, but I've since consolidated them by forwarding into one personal email account and the account that my university gives me.