I appreciate everyones concern and, to be honest, it sounds bad, but seriously... calm down! It's not going to be the end of the world, even if they do it.
Allow me to elaborate:
The huge majority of people, don't do self-custody anyways, they either buy and keep in CEXs or they buy ETFs. So, this leaves a minority (the rest of us) who seriously care about bitcoin's true intention and do self-custody. But, we 're not like the rest of the world, we will find our workaround.
I think you miss the point. The point is not whether we can get alternatives. There will always be alternatives to things like this. I don't think I've ever downloaded a wallet from Play Store, and I use an android device. The point is, this is how it starts. It starts with very small and relatively insignificant things. They start like this and give one excuse, like "it's been used for fraud and other illegal activities", and later on, it will be more significant stuff like making it compulsory to have your bitcoin and other crypto in a CEX.
If it truly has no significance whatsoever and we have nothing to worry about, then they wouldn't have done it. However, the fact that a company as big as Google is willing to dissatisfy a section of its customers this way suggests that it has significance.
What even makes it funnier is that they always make it seem like they have the best interests of the public at heart, when in reality, they just don't care. This way, it makes it easy to gaslight people who don't buy the bullshit. For example, when they make it seem like criminals use non-custodial wallets, then you, who oppose them or use non-custodial wallets, are criminals, after all, "if you have nothing to hide, why are you scared?".
You don't expect big companies to come out and say, "We want your personal data so we can use it however we want" They will tell you they use it to prevent crimes like child pornography, fraud, money laundering, etc and then go ahead to assure you that your privacy is safe. If you kick against that, it's easier to gaslight you and make it seem like you're hiding something illegal. In the end, they always seem like the good guys.
