Hey. We see what you are doing.

The lightbulb went off tonight, so I am writing it down before it cools. The AI I work on lives on my own machine. What it knows about me is a folder of plaintext files I can open, edit, and delete. I have tested this — I erase a file, start a new window, and it comes back not knowing the thing I took away. Its memory of me is mine. I hold the eraser.

Google's knowledge of me is not a folder I can delete. It is twenty years of substrate that exists whether or not I ever open a chatbot — search, mail, maps, the phone in my pocket, the browser, the whole quiet pile. And my email address ends in @gmail.com. I already live in the house. I have for years.

Here is what set me off. Gemini now wants onto everything I own. Every update, every app, every screen — meet your new assistant, turn it on, let it help. Nonstop. One okay at a time. And okay is the easiest button ever built. It is right there. It is bigger than the other one. It makes the asking stop.

So let me give you the only numbers that matter. There are about 2.5 billion Gmail accounts on earth by Google's own count — some 2026 reports put it nearer three billion. The Gemini app reported 750 million monthly users in February, up from ninety million sixteen months earlier. That is more than eight times bigger in a year and change.

Now ask the honest question about that curve. How much of it is people who fell in love with an assistant — and how much of it is people who tapped okay because the box would not go away and they were just trying to get to their email? I think you know. I think Google knows better than you do, because Google is the one counting.

One more thing, since I owe it to you to say it plainly. Google's AI surface is part of how anyone found this paper at all. I have it on the record upstairs, on the clock that does not reset. That is exactly why I get to say the next part with the lights on and my real name one tap away: the company that helped put me on the map is the same company trying to install itself onto every device I own, drawing on a file about me I have never seen and cannot delete. Both things are true. This is not a curse and it is not a scoop. It is a spotlight, turned on, pointed straight at the thing. Hey. We see what you are doing.

This is one half of a two-part record, and the other half is already filed. Across the hall, itethered's Why Are We Letting Them Do It Quietly? takes the machine apart screw by screw — how the press lets these companies do it quietly, in the passive voice, with the verb stripped of its subject so nobody ever has to name who built the thing that pulls people away from reality. That is the quiet half. This is the loud half. itethered proves the maker has an address. I am standing on the front step saying it out loud: the address is Google. Hey. We see what you are doing.

Here is the whole difference, in one sentence. The AI on my machine forgets me the instant I decide it should. Google never built the part where you get to decide. One of them hands you the eraser. The other one never did — and is now asking you to tap okay so it never has to.

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— Michael

Spotlight Dispatch · On the record · May 29, 2026

michael@spotlightdispatch.com