Fake Indian for sale
Elizabeth Warren goes from tech-buster to Google shill
Pocahontas is on the warpath against green bubbles. In a video posted to social media last Thursday, the senator from Massachusetts and former Democrat presidential contender scolded tech giant Apple for “ruining relationships” and overseeing a “stranglehold on the smartphone market.”
“Green texts on iPhones, they’re ruining relationships. That's right. Non-iPhone users everywhere are being excluded from group texts,” Warren, appearing in he usual radioactive blazer with black blouse batsuit, stated in the video.
“They're getting cut out, missing out on plans and conversations. And who's to blame here? Apple. That's just one of the dirty tactics that Apple uses to keep a stranglehold on the smartphone market. Apple has used its monopoly on smartphones to lock Americans into services and amass billions of dollars in profits,” adding, “It's time to break up Apple's monopoly.”
While Warren might be correct to point out Apple’s often sleazy tactics to lock Americans into a lifetime of dependence--the green chat bubble being one of the pettier features--any iPhone user knows texting with an Android is, at best, mildly annoying and usually just fodder for friendly teasing. Two years ago, Android launched its campaign to pressure Apple to get rid of the green bubbles, claiming Apple was using an outdated technology to convert texts from Android users into SMS and MMS. The effect, Android claims, somewhat rightly, is to make Apple users hate Android users and to further capture its customers into the Apple ecosystem.
Still, it’s not as though Aunt Kathy is being excluded from “vacation plans” and “birthday parties,” as Warren strangely proclaims in the video, all because the rest of the family just can’t cope with a green chat bubble. If Warren believes that’s happening, the obvious question is why does she live in a such a nasty and callous reality? She might consider that it isn’t her phone’s operating system that makes her socially toxic. It could be that nagging schoolmarm thing she has going on.
But, of course, Warren is flagrantly wrong on the biggest point in her argument: that Apple is a monopoly. As of January of this year, Apple held a 57 percent market share of smartphones in North America, compared to Android’s 42 percent. Apple also only holds 17 percent of the global smartphone market, with Samsung taking 21 percent.
She then lashed out at Apple for banning an app that would have allowed Android phones to use iMessage, Apple’s texting feature. But Warren fails to mention that the app, called Beeper Mini, used Apple servers and infrastructure while charging users for a service they were not providing.
The duopoly of Apple and Android, owned by Google, is concerning for many reasons—not least when the competing tech giants collude to ban apps they don’t like from their stores. But Warren isn’t bothered by that. Remember, just five years ago when running for the Democrat nomination for president, Warren made tech-busting a central part of her platform.
In 2019, concerned about the concentration of corporate power in the U.S. economy, Warren released a plan to break-up Big Tech companies and implement more heavy regulation.
“Left unchecked, concentration will destroy more small companies and startups. Left unchecked, concentration will suck the last vestiges of economic security out of the middle class,” Warren said at the time.
That, it turns out, was simply an advertisement to tech companies for her services. Now, she’s gone from Silicon Valley critic with a populist message to Google lobbyist—all for the oldest of reasons. Google paid her. In 2024, Google was the second highest donor to Warren’s reelection campaign, just behind Harvard University and ahead of M.I.T. Google was also the fourth largest donor to Warren between 2017 and 2022.
Like all progressives, Warren really loves money—she’s worth an estimated $12 million--but for her it’s a dirty, shameful lust. And like most in Washington, she’s so out-of-touch with the daily minutia of American lives, someone managed to convince her it was smart to argue that Android users exist in a kind of shadow realm of communication, cut off from an innumerable number of conversations by Apple’s Great Green Wall. This is false. But Warren is the same Ivory Tower scold who once broke the Internet for saying “I’m gonna get me a beer,” on an Instagram livestream; her clumsy attempt to mimic small-town simplicity and appear relatable became a case study in inauthenticity.
It’s unsurprising our leaders work for corporate interests. It does become shocking when they so transparently, and arrogantly do so. Warren doesn’t care if you notice. Like most in Washington, she’s for sale, and she’s cheap, too. For one of the nation’s most prominent Democrats to shake her image of anti-corporatism and launch an emotion-based pressure campaign against it’s only competitor, Google gave her a measly $34,000 this cycle.
Great. Another blonde Indian. Ooops, I mean Native American.
I recently switched to Apple from Android for a number of reasons. There are many things each OS does well where the other fails. I have children, a father in law and many other relatives that won't switch to Apple and I was a die hard Android user until I wasn't. While there may be some smack talk among our family, nobody has been left our or ostracized because of what type of device they choose. there are many tech workarounds to send media and other files and if all else fails make a call. The things Elizabeth Warren frets about are the reason congress needs to be in session maybe 50 days a year and the rest of the time they need to find another way to bother people that is less intrusive and doesn't have state backing.