Why do I need Google Play Services?

[Paul627g]

I agree with edglenn, above.
Paul's answer was indicative of almost every socially inept "techie" I've met throughout my career. Your first statement, "if you remove Google Play you may have bad effects removing it", is barely English, and contains redundancy. I wouldn't mind so much, but you patronize the OP without expounding with a qualifying explanation. The response is akin to, "Look, little boy, don't delete the app. Trust me, you're too stupid to understand why you shouldn't delete it, so I won't bother to explain. If you do, monsters will come for you".

Additionally, nowhere did the OP state he didn't want Google, yet Paul unnecessarily questions him (again, patronizing) as to why he decided on an Andriod based product. This comment was utterly out of place. Again, synonymous with most awkward "IT guys" who've served me during my career.

Finally, the OP was thanking Golfdriver97 for his more appropriate and direct answer to the question posed.

Normally I wouldn't even respond to a post like this because you took the time to create an account just to come in here and question and ridicule those who have been here day and night for years on end helping others.

As for all the words you put into my mouth that was never said, kudo's for coming up with such creative imaginative thoughts on what I was calling the OP. Far from the truth.

My statement was simple. You buy an Android product and then want to delete or disable on or more of the key components of the OS because it was showing a high resource usage or battery drain. My thoughts would be to first investigate why this is happening. Then I only questioned why you would be interested in a Nexus device which is basically a bare boned vanilla OS and then turn around and want to disable or certain key features of it? It really doesn't make much sense but I didn't blast the OP for their decision, only asked out of curiosity why.

I'm also glad to hear that you identify " IT guys " as those who have " served you " during your career. To me that sounds very belittling to place anyone within a company or organization outside of a group or team effort by saying they " served you ".

Anyhow thanks for your comments, we do take everything said into consideration to make ourselves and the forums better. I'll have to go back and review my last 4 years here and over 15,000 posts and countless volunteer hours and review them to make sure they meet your self serving needs.

 

[B. Diddy]

I agree with edglenn, above.
Paul's answer was indicative of almost every socially inept "techie" I've met throughout my career. Your first statement, "if you remove Google Play you may have bad effects removing it", is barely English, and contains redundancy. I wouldn't mind so much, but you patronize the OP without expounding with a qualifying explanation. The response is akin to, "Look, little boy, don't delete the app. Trust me, you're too stupid to understand why you shouldn't delete it, so I won't bother to explain. If you do, monsters will come for you".

Additionally, nowhere did the OP state he didn't want Google, yet Paul unnecessarily questions him (again, patronizing) as to why he decided on an Andriod based product. This comment was utterly out of place. Again, synonymous with most awkward "IT guys" who've served me during my career.

Finally, the OP was thanking Golfdriver97 for his more appropriate and direct answer to the question posed.

Paul627g is an awesome AC Moderator who started off as an awesome Ambassador. He works tirelessly to make this site a great place, and also tries to help members out as much as possible. Period. I didn't see his response as patronizing or "socially inept" at all, because he was backing up what Golfdriver97 said.

Please notice what the OP said: "what is the real consequence of getting ris of these processes that I don't think I need?" Users who think they don't need Google services on a Google device that has Google products that are closely integrated with the OS from Google often run into major problems when trying to modify things to suit their preferences (like trying to delete Google Play Services, for example).

 

[Golfdriver97]

I agree with edglenn, above.
Paul's answer was indicative of almost every socially inept "techie" I've met throughout my career. Your first statement, "if you remove Google Play you may have bad effects removing it", is barely English, and contains redundancy. I wouldn't mind so much, but you patronize the OP without expounding with a qualifying explanation. The response is akin to, "Look, little boy, don't delete the app. Trust me, you're too stupid to understand why you shouldn't delete it, so I won't bother to explain. If you do, monsters will come for you".

Additionally, nowhere did the OP state he didn't want Google, yet Paul unnecessarily questions him (again, patronizing) as to why he decided on an Andriod based product. This comment was utterly out of place. Again, synonymous with most awkward "IT guys" who've served me during my career.

Finally, the OP was thanking Golfdriver97 for his more appropriate and direct answer to the question posed.

I am not totally sure he was thanking me, but Darth Spock.

From a Carbon M8 and AC Forums app

 

[B. Diddy]

I am not totally sure he was thanking me, but Darth Spock.

From a Carbon M8 and AC Forums app

Or the team as a whole. Because that's how we roll.

 

[eharg]

I came to this forum with the same problem -- in the last couple of weeks my battery has started draining really quickly. So, it seems that we have confirmed that Google Play Services IS an essential service. This is not at all obvious to many non-techies from its name -- please just assume that those of us who come here look for help don't know what is a core service and what isn't...there are a ton of things called Google blah blah on my phone that I don't use, and a few that I do use and love.

But it seems no one has a solution to the basic problem, which is that my phone is dead by 4 PM when it used to make it to midnight with a decent amount of battery left. Is this due to an update of Google Play Services? Can I revert to a previous version or something? Will Google fix the problem? Or do I need to go buy a big honking extended battery? Because a dead phone at 4 PM isn't working for me.

 

[Golfdriver97]

I came to this forum with the same problem -- in the last couple of weeks my battery has started draining really quickly. So, it seems that we have confirmed that Google Play Services IS an essential service. This is not at all obvious to many non-techies from its name -- please just assume that those of us who come here look for help don't know what is a core service and what isn't...there are a ton of things called Google blah blah on my phone that I don't use, and a few that I do use and love.

But it seems no one has a solution to the basic problem, which is that my phone is dead by 4 PM when it used to make it to midnight with a decent amount of battery left. Is this due to an update of Google Play Services? Can I revert to a previous version or something? Will Google fix the problem? Or do I need to go buy a big honking extended battery? Because a dead phone at 4 PM isn't working for me.

What phone do you have? Have you tried clearing cache or resetting the device?

Signed, XenonRom, Nexus 5 and AC Forums App

 

[Rodrigo Billaw]

I just registered to say two things:

1. The answer was indeed rude, and don't try to hide that now, it was sarcastic. And from the responses after, all I could see is everybody trying to "pet" the Big Moderator Big Boss. Yeah, corporative behavior all around. If the Paul guy were just "someone else" there would not have been so much "petting" for sure. Also, just because you, the moderador, have helped a lot, that alone doesn't give you the right to be sarcastic with people that just want to be helped. You have a lot of knowledge, for sure, but be cool with people who don't. When people (in general) get a lot of "stars" they tend to be arrogant and have no self-criticism, don't be like this

2. I have the same problem with Moto X, 4.4.2. I actually have a good battery life comparing to most users (I think), maybe 22h of battery. In my previous phone, a Samsung, I rooted and I could delete the GP Services. Even so, I had access to the Google Play Store normally, and if I wanted to update an app, them GP Services would be automatically downloaded again. So I usually updated the app, then deleted the GP Services Again.

But that was Samsung, now Moto X was made by Google. Would there be any problems (BIG ones) in DISABLE? In the use details it says:
Included packages
-Google Backup Transport
-Google Play Services
-Google Account Manager
-Google Contacts Sync
-Google Services Framework

So maybe it's no worth disabling? I have the usage like this:
Screen 27%
Android OS 21%
Phone idle 12%
Wifi 11%
GP Services 8%
[...]

Oh... for people having battery problems, and with Snappdragon hardware, one thing I did was installing BatteryGuru from qualcomm which extended the battery life a lot. It controls app refresh individually, great app for non rooted devices

Thanks!

ps: sorry for the long post

 

[B. Diddy]

Please, enough of the finger-pointing. Thank you.

 

[ahlberto]

Hi guys.First of all introducing myself since is my 1st post at least with this account.
Now,..i too removed google play services and google store because i need space for my HTC Desire CM7.2 (rooted,unlocked).
I did that because i had some bad experiences of apps made by some dudes in india were auto-instaling on my phone...no joke man...never had saw those app and never installed apps from those "developers" and they simply start appearing in my phone...i complained to google and nothing happened...nothing.
Uninstaling google serviçes,the only side effect i saw was youtube stop working and maps had a feature disabled but the app runs ok.Google+ dont work either but i dont use it.Youtube i use from the web browser do i really dont miss the google serviçes app.As for the google play app i prefer to dowload the apps to my pc and then load the apk files to my storage card.
Now,about the battery...in my experiece disabling 3g services made my phone battery last much more...a really BIG diference!Buti really only use wifi to access the web so i can disable the 3G services.With the 3g on the phone was dead wen i woke up in the morning and with 3g disabled the phone didnt loose more than 3 or 5% of battery so in my case was the 3G services that was draining my battery but expiriences may vary from phone to phone...

 

[kaboose O]

I'm running stock 4.1 on a rooted zte and I have completely removed Google services as well as play store and anything involving Google (except maps) and my phone couldn't be happier. Services was eating up my data like no tomorrow as well as battery life. I live in a rural area where internet is only available via satellite so I rooted my phone for tether options (funny I got 4g but cant get broadband in my area) I installed a play store alternative that I can still get apps that are listed on Google play, made a custom keyboard from scratch, and I'm running an overclocker with performance settings. Its a completely different phone. No more overheating, weird actions, Google ads or any ads, and my battery lasts over 15hrs of continuous use. (depending if I'm playing gta at business meetings or using WiFi with screen brightness turned to max) I also feel like Google is trying to monitor me/us and I feel its bad enough the NSA has access to almost everything we do. From personal experience if you know what you are doing then go for it but always keep backups of what you remove. The more you can tweak your device the closer to the Linux core it becomes.

 

[Devlyn16]

Hi this is not my first post

I because we have so many "newbies" here I just wanted to clarify that everyone is reading the Battery stats correctly .For example right now I have my Moto X at 88% not charging. Meaning I have used 12% of the battery.

of that 12% used 36% was screen, 25% was Android OS, 14% was Phone idle. 8% was Cell standby, 6% was Android System, 4% was Google services, 3% was Chrome, 2% was Google Search. This does NOT mean Google services used 4% of my Battery, it means it used 4% of the 12% of the battery that was used.

I'm not a mathlete so I'm sure someone smarter than I will come along and translate this into a more user friendly/accurate number but my point is Android OS has used a little over 2% of my total power available in my battery but to the uninformed it looks huge because 25% means a quarter.

 

[iconoclasthero]

I've got CM 11 (M7?) on Nexus 10 so perhaps to start that indicates this might not be the right forum. That said, the problem I went looking for is that when I close my tablet and expect to be able to pick it up in a couple of days it is dead...like 0-1% battery life. Of the roughly 100% battery life it used, 89% of that was Google Play Services, so that isn't a fraction of a fraction that is ca. 87% of the battery used by GPS. This is in airplane mode with wifi only on. If all that results is that I have to update things manually, I'm generally already set up that way. When I've lost the Play Store, I just had to reload gapps. Any thoughts on how to get Google Play Services back if I get rid of it?

 

[jhooda]

Due to battery drain issues on my Samsung Note (1st Gen), I started using “Network Connection” app to monitor open connections. I ended up uninstalling/disabling whatever I can, with Chrome being the biggest culprit (see i.e., browser - chrome uninstall left behind com.android.chrome[noinfo] apk with active connections - Android Enthusiasts Stack Exchange ). I also disabled “Google Play Store” and “Google Play Services” as they also maintain multiple open connections for who knows what —I wouldn't have mind if they rather connected once per day, but continuous connection —Really!!! Now many of my other apps when they are in middle of something get a nasty and ugly popup “Unfortunately, Google Play services has stopped.” This goes on to prove some of the posted assertion that these services are meant for collecting users actions and not for installing apps —I hardly install any app.

 

[James-Dsouza]

Re: Why I do NOT need Google Play Services?

I removed Google Play services from my Samsung phone as it was taking up a lot of space and needed to install others.
I read everywhere on various forums etc; by experts of serious problems and later realised these were just copy & Paste from Google itself.

I went ahead and just uninstalled it and got bonus of a much better battery too & realised I should have done this long ago.
As I had Sync on, Playstore still updated apps and Play services is not needed as they misleadingly claim. Had sync on but disabled Auto Sync to manually update which I want as I do not really want maps etc;
*Youtube refused to start, so I now created a bookmark in my browser and access from there as anyhow I use my comp for downloads. There are workarounds for most issues, just check and its not really needed except for people who have mobiles with good space and Ram or need it for directions or suggestions.

So if you have enough space just disable it in 'Settings > Applications > Tab "All" > Google Play services and press the >Disable button' & if you get a 'Ok' button press that too or just remove it, your phone will function great - forget the expert copy and paste opinions, you can always re-install if needed.

 

[jerrykur]

Re: Why I do NOT need Google Play Services?

FWIW, here is my understanding as a developer of messing around with service processes in general, and the Google Play Service process specifically. (If you don't want the background jump to the last paragraph).

First, what is a service? From the Android Developer documents:

A Service is an application component that can perform long-running operations in the background and does not provide a user interface. Another application component can start a service and it will continue to run in the background even if the user switches to another application.

So a service has the ability to do things for other applications in the background. Cool.

You might ask, "couldn't the application just do those things itself?". The answer is yes, the application could do those things. The next question would be, "Then why do this is a service?". Well, there are a number of reasons, but two big ones are responsiveness and having a single point to do specific tasks.

Let's talk about responsiveness. If the application's main thread is tied up doing a long running task, like fetching a big file, or mail from a slow mail server, the UI on the app may not be able to process events. If that is the case and you do something like push a button nothing happens. "damn app" And if the UI's thread is tied up long enough you get a nice "application is unresponsive error". Grrrr. To prevent this, those long running tasks are done by the service and the client app is notified when the task is done, such as when new data is available. The app can then get that data from the service and display it to you. Makes sense?

So, what about this single point to do specific tasks? If you do the same thing over and over you want to only do it one place. As a developer this means you only have one piece of code with a set of APIs to do tasks. Now there is the single piece of code to look for and handle security issues, modify to make new features available, etc. It also means the overall size of a suite of apps can be smaller since the services that multiple apps need are in a single place and each app can share these common services. All good things!

So this leads us to what happens when we disable one of these services? First, a little clarification. The term "service" is overused in programming. In the next bit I am trying to be very clear to distiguish between the service process you can stop/start/disable, AND the features of the Google Service API. The two are related, but there may not be a 1 to 1 relationship.

Finally, so what happens when you stop or disable the Google Play Service process? Obviously the apps that references features provided by the service process cannot use them. The impact to an application depending upon how this app is coded. I may mean the app cannot run at all or only a certain feature is not available. In the case of the Google Play Service process running on your phone. I don't know the exact specifics of how the API is implemented in the service process. Sorry. But a quick read of the descriptions of the Google Play Service APIs packages (which implement the features) is revealing. It shows that the APIs provide applications with support for mobile ads, in app billing, Maps, Wallet, Drive, Chromecast, and Wearables. So if you disable the Goggle Play Service process on your phone do not be surpised if applications that use any of these features degrade, act strange, or do not run at all.

Have fun, and as Voltiare (and Spidey's Uncle Ben) said "With great power comes great responsibility".

 

[James Thehand]

Im reading on the International Business Times website, that i should uninstall google play services to fix the fault with the new android update, which is making google play drain my battery at twice the rate of my screen. My xperia z from a full charge was warning only 30 mins left at current usage.

 

[Ariariari]

Danie Shawen, I agree with you 100%. I have been trying to figure out this infamous google play thing, thank you for your answer!

 

[Voja Jovic]

Hey guys, how about "disable services" app? We just need to figure out what are the misbehaving services and which are safe to disable. I've just disabled the blue ones and got lots of free ram and nothing bad happened so far. The blue were "system update" (I'm sure I don't need), gcmservice and google http something. So no need to uninstall the entire google play services app or anything of the sort. It would be really good if someone has the link for understanding what every service is actually doing, but with text for human beings, not all of us are android developers u know. There are lots of resources of the sort for windows services and I couldn't find none for android. What gives?
*not saying android devs are not humans, just a joke, not a good one probably too.

 

[Kevin Tyler1]

I noticed the same too...when I check on RAM consumption,I found three separate Google play services running n accumulatively using like 100mbz. So the solution for me came here, DO NOT REMOVE GOOGLE PLAY SERVICES,u need ur contacts synced n it has other good benefits in the midst of its annoyance, but u can remove most google apps that run it I.e Hangouts, google plus, Google now launcher (I prefer nova instead), google calendar,Gmail (replaced with K9 mail) Google drive etc and substitute them with third party apps (do not worry, u will still receive SMS if u remove hangouts n replace with others like go SMS,handcent n etc) so, now google play services consume only 12-15mbs....

 

[ks2problema]

Even though I'm an All Access subscriber, I found I had to uninstall Google Play Music simply in order to get my modest 2.3 Android to run properly -- I couldn't add contacts or even edit a phone number because GPM had bloated out to take every available MB of my internal storage. (Thankfully, they at least had fixed it so that it could finally store your media files to SD storage. Too bad they couldn't find a way to get the bloated app to load into SD!) I'd been watching the behavior of Google Play Services for some time. While removing GPM helped, getting rid of the Play Store app (reverting to Market) and ditching Play Services was like getting a brand new phone!

Am I missing stuff? I guess. Nothing I can see. But my phone barely ran before removing these bloated Google apps and now it's a little champ again. I love this phone. A LOT MORE than those apps.

(But, YOU BET it ticks me off to be paying $10/mo for a subscription streaming service from Google that brings my Android phone to its knees -- even while OTHER subscription service Android apps -- I've been on 6 over the last decade and the last 3 had Android apps -- worked fine.)

Now, I DID buy a Google Nexus 7 tablet. BIG mistake. I'm way over this whole Apple-impersonation thing Google is doing making devices with non-upgradeable memory and non-replaceable batteries -- AND this thoroughly obnoxious game of bloating up their software base to force people to have to buy new phones. Just get rid of the bloated, crappy software and your phone runs swell. At least MINE does.