But it’s clear that Google has a history of building products with RSS and killing the RSS support once it’s established a user base.

Not only RSS. It was the same with XMPP, and probably other things I don’t remember now. Better don’t rely on Google products.

The announcer (the enterprise on the ad) pays to the advertising platform (for example Google) which gives a small amount to the site displaying the ad.

Hundreds of partners is very common in news paper sites

Close the app and find another one.

Is it part of the apps that have been recently sold to a commercial company? If so, you have to uninstall it and download the “Fossify” equivalent to keep the open source version.

Does it detect the paywalls and cookie walls too?

Updated 18 months ago on F-Droid, but the Github looks still active. I hope they’ll soon have a releasable version.

This functionality can be local. I use the Google keyboard with internet access blocked and it works. The only thing missing is the ability to search for emojis typing a word (they are still in the list) and some features that I never used and never understood why they are in a keyboard since it’s not related to typing text, like the gifs.

The only reason I see for a keyboard to need internet connection is to update the dictionary when it’s modified, but it shouldn’t prevent to work with an outdated dictionary.

When I searched for alternatives a few months ago, I couldn’t find anything satisfying.

Use cash if you want privacy. The card is linked to your name too.

This would help them to improve the algorithms and make it worse. An active defense could be to keep the ads visible and boycott the announcers, so that they lose more money when they pay for advertising.

What’s the problem with 2G?

When I see this, the only viable option I see is to close the site and boycott it. Any other choice would encourage more companies to do this blackmail.