I noticed several weeks ago that when Amazon sends a shipping notice it doesn’t tell me what items are in the shipment. It’s very annoying.

John Gruber has the answer. It’s pure spite on Amazon’s part:

That statement from Amazon is almost honest, if you squint at it and ignore the bit about it having anything to do with “simplification”. If you order a Torx screwdriver, what’s simple is getting a confirmation email with the exact name, brand, and photo of the item you ordered, not “a hardware item”. The honest part is “reduces customer information shared outside the Amazon app”.

The fact is, a lot of people use apps like Gmail for email. In fact, a lot of people use Gmail in particular. There’s a good chance you do. When you use Gmail, Google learns everything in your email. Amazon sees this as a competitive problem for them, not a privacy problem for users. Everyone who uses Gmail basically knows that Google “knows” what’s in their email, and they’re voluntarily agreeing to that. Amazon just doesn’t like that any of its competitors — perhaps especially Google — can glean so much information about what people are buying from Amazon. So Amazon, in an act of competitive spite that corrupts its relationship with its own customers, is limiting all useful purchase information to channels that it controls — its website and its own apps.

If customers relied solely on the “Your Orders” page at Amazon, they wouldn’t need to send any emails at all. The obvious fact is, people go to Amazon when they want to buy something. They don’t come back until they want to buy something else. They enjoy getting confirmation and shipping notifications in email because they check their email regularly.

I still use Gmail. Other than that I’ve pretty much gotten rid of all other Google-related apps. I’d get rid of Gmail as well but at this point it would be a major pain in the ass. And of course, my Gmail account is directly related to my YouTube account, so there’s that.

And in any case, getting rid of Gmail wouldn’t solve the Amazon problem.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to reduce my dependence on Amazon.

Oh, in case you’re wondering why I’m reducing my Google dependence. It’s partly because of their invasion of privacy, and partly because their apps try to take over my systems, but it’s largely because:

Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder and one of the world’s richest people, is a longtime friend of Mr. Newsom, the California governor. But now, like so many other leaders in the traditionally liberal bastion of Silicon Valley, Mr. Brin has shifted to the right. With his outspokenly conservative girlfriend by his side, he has joined the ranks of tech executives courting Mr. Trump in his second term.

Last May, he attended a fund-raiser featuring Vice President JD Vance and donated nearly half a million dollars to the Republican National Committee. In September, he told the president at a White House dinner that he was “very grateful” for the administration’s support of tech companies. This March, he was named to a White House tech council and donated to a Republican candidate for governor of California who has since earned Mr. Trump’s endorsement.

Mr. Brin is particularly rattled by the proposal for a one-time, 5 percent tax on California billionaires, and has emerged as Silicon Valley’s leading combatant of the measure. To escape the tax, he moved before a Dec. 31 deadline to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe (he now spends every other week at Google’s California headquarters, alternating with Nevada, a person familiar with the arrangement said). And he has spent $57 million to try to undercut the measure, including $9 million more disclosed on Friday.

And before anyone screams, “Well, what about Tim Cook of Apple?” I’ll point out again that although I wish Cook would keep his distance from Trump, as far as I can see none of Apple’s policies have changed. Cook is merely paying bribes in order to be left alone and it seems to be working. Watch any of Apple’s announcements and you’ll see folks of multiple ethnicities and genders making the announcements. There are things about Apple policies that I disapprove of, but they aren’t related to the Trump administration.

If I could cut all ties to Amazon and Google, I would, but at this point it simply isn’t practical for me. So I reduce my dependence on them.