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2 days agoThere are definitely good, non malicious reasons to have it as a separate app and that should actually be preferred. Off the top of my head:
- Separation of permissions - it only has the permissions it asks for instead of every permission messages has
- It can be disabled/removed without disabling messages
- it can be reused by other applications if that’s a desirable feature
Some people might actually like this: thinking of women getting unsolicited dick picks in particular
The real issue is definitely people not having total control over their own devices.
It doesn’t need permissions to be sent pictures from messages though, that’s all local and likely done via an exported Service. Good chance other Google products are or will make use of it in the future.