Comment by dalbasal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dalbasal | Hacker News Reader

These bits of litigation are interesting, but my usual takeaway is a mild contempt for the whole thing.

Whether it's something minor like this or a major antitrust cases (eg, the recent adwords EU case), what is and isn't legally actionable seems arbitrary from a non-legal perspective. Even legislation efforts like european "cookie laws" and such seem bumbling and naive.

What's the legal fix to this, assuming google lose? An extra tick box? T&C update?

The reality of interacting with large software companies as a consumer doesn't lend well to brick and mortar analogies. A T&C section is not analogous to a rental contract. Even residential or employment contracts are usually subject to legal filters... cultural norms at least.

The "problem" here is one of structure. Google own android to (a)dominate the mobile phone market and (b) support the targeted ads business, the main business.

Whether or not google are "stealing" data allowance from customers, or acquiring this right voluntarily/contractually from customers is interesting in the abstract, I guess. In is so peripheral to the actual problem though.

I realize this case isn't supposed to be dealing with the wider problems of legal monopolies. The legal/legislative whole is. It seems that whatever the goal of the action (from litigation to legislation or regulation), they pick around the irrelevant edges.

What, legally, should google be legally allowed to do given that it's leveraging the fact that they control your phone, own a lot of your data, etc. If the answer is whatever the T&Cs say, the answer is "everything."

Whether or not google are "stealing" data allowance from customers, or acquiring this right voluntarily/contractually from customers is interesting in the abstract

Specific example of harm: international roaming data fees are outrageous and even a small use of data can stack up. If I visit Canada using my UK mobile phone, I have to be sure to keep data roaming turned off because I get dinged for £6/Mb (about US $7.50/Mb). Over a couple of weeks, google sipping a bit of bandwidth here or there can actually end up doubling or tripling my monthly bill, even when it's single-digit megabytes.

(The real problem is of course the existence of the search/advertising hybrid business model, which needs to be addressed at a legislative level. But no, costing me a noticeable amount of money under unpredictable circumstances is not an abstract/trivial problem.)

You should sign up with three. In Europe + about 30 other countries I get to use my allowance as normal when overseas

3 doesn't have free roaming in Canada. They do in US but not Canada.

Canada is one huge hole in Three's roaming. As I learned the hard way, visiting Canada on Three is like taking an involuntary time trip 20 years back in time, cellphone-wise. Source: am a happy long-term Three customer (other than that one visit to Canada in 2018).

The real problem in your example are absolutely abusive and exploitative roaming charges, not Android or search/advertising business model.

Should the phone sit quiet when you're not using it? Sure. Is £6/Mb even close to a reasonable rate? Not unless you're on Mars.

The real problem in your example are absolutely abusive and exploitative roaming charges, not Android or search/advertising business model.

They're both problems.

Not that you should “need” to do so (as in its absurd we still pay such high fees, but carrier roaming interconnect is still legacy tech for the most part), but most carriers these days have a “Intl data” add on that gives you either unlimited data for the day (usually around $10/£10/10€ based on experience) or as a full month add on for around $20 and it then uses your normal data allowance.

Do you see that the man don't have it? Your suggestion is irrelevant

FWIW, both Vodafone and EE offer good deals for Canada roaming. EE includes Canada roaming in many of their plans (or its £10/month extra to add it). Vodafone also includes it in some of their plans or it's £6/day if not.

I use Three because apart from Canada their international roaming deals are way better for my purposes (as in: free all-I-can-eat data in almost all the countries I visit). The problem is the holes in the network of bilateral roaming agreements between carriers, which are deliberately opaque to customers.

If you do a lot of travelling Vodafone is usually better. Global Roaming Plus (https://www.vodafone.co.uk/cs/groups/public/documents/webcon...) covers more destinations than 3 'inclusive' and nearly every country in the world outside of that is £6/day. Whereas with 3 you're stuck back to £10/MB nonsense if you go outside of their roaming countries.

Sure, the legal issue can be related to a real life ham. It is, I think, trivial on the whole. It's especially trivial of you consider the way these things are generally "righted."

(1) Google will clarify and establish their right to do whatever it is they're doing. Rarely will the result be google changing. (2) The do-whatever-then-ask-forgiveness mo may actually be reenforced. Google actually lost their EU antitrust case. It was about adwords, the google moneymaker. If Google had known in advance they would be found guilty and fined $1.4bn, they would have certainly done it anyway. (3) Whatever harm is acknowledged here will not be acknowledged as what it is, a part of the larger issue of google's abuse of power. Sipping data is the least of it.

It takes huge effort to cut your traffic to 0 even on nominally "ungoogled" phones.

I myself found it out the same way when Google service somehow managed to bypass every lock on roaming traffic.

The answer here has been obvious for many years. Clearly, there is a conflict of interest in having an organization interested in selling ads to also make one of the worlds most widely used operating systems.

So we break them up. We regulate their conduct, we interrogate their business and ensure there is no apparent conflicts of interest going on.

Mobile OS solutions LTD would develop Android OS, wouldn't unduly favor any given party more than another.

It's possible, but you'd need to essentially have complete and total access to the daily affairs and perform audits to ensure compliance.

Legislation can fix this but it'd be a mammoth task to challenge Google.

It doesn't really matter who's involved, the security model in android is extremely user hostile. Many organizations are given super user access on device and the end user isn't. Only one of these needs to be poorly behaved (not even selling ads) for the device to be full of unremovable malware.

There's definitely a social problem here, but I think for once people HN are underestimating the importance of a technical problem.

> Many organizations are given super user access on device and the end user isn't.

That depends. Assuming an uncorrupted chain of delivery between you and the manufacturer, if you're running a vanilla AOSP, the only organization having root access is Google and you. Even with Samsung and other manufacturers, they are the only additional party whose packages have admin rights.

The situation is more nasty with devices bought/leased from a carrier because these insist on preloading all kinds of crapware - which is why I would strictly recommend everyone to work out their own financing and buy a stock device independently from a carrier. Chances are it's gonna be cheaper in the long run anyway.

> Even with Samsung and other manufacturers, they are the only additional party whose packages have admin rights.

It depends on what you call "admin rights", but from my point of view you're wrong. On Samsung devices, DT Ignite (Israel-based ad company) is preinstalled, which has the rights to install new apps. Getting the right to install new apps means you can get any user permission. (like silently access camera, microphone, or screen capture to capture you typing your password)

> The situation is more nasty with devices bought/leased from a carrier because these insist on preloading all kinds of crapware

Apple has their own issues, but at least the above carrier crapware issue isn’t one of them on iOS and never has been.

Company selling phone should by law be required to hand over any keys to the user. User should be able to change any aspect of the os or even delete it if they wish. We need to end the abuse of Google and Apple.

How is Mobile OS Solutions Ltd going to make money in this scenario?

MOS could license their software to handset manufacturers. Or charge apps a fee for using their services such as a software store, hosting etc.

You're awfully confident that this data is for ads despite absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any kind to support that.

Notice that Apple is also sending data? Is that also for ads? Should we be breaking up Apple, too?

This is almost certainly related to boring things like checking for app updates, and less boring but still controllable usage & diagnostic data (Settings > Privacy > Advanced > Usage & Diagnostic).

It's mostly just that Google, and realistically all apps, need to be far more conservative with cell data use than they are. Many developers forget it costs money and isn't infinite in amount.

The device knows when it is on a metered connection and should send logs (which is a preference the user can decline during device setup) only when it is on a metered connection. If it doesn't, that's a bug. Google is pretty unresponsive to bugs filed via the external Android bug reporting tool, so if this is a bug, I hope they pay dearly and pay more attention.

It's possible that the device they ran the test on had an unlimited data plan, in which case, this might not be a bug, and the judge will throw out the case.

https://developer.android.com/reference/androidx/core/net/Co...

Google by being present and controlling every part of ecosystem has unfair advantage in the market. They need to be split and start paying the right tax. Any wealth achieved by creative accounting should be confiscated. Any data collected without legitimate business need should be ordered to be deleted. If company has a search engine, it should be illegal to use that data to feed ad serving business. If company produces phone hardware it should be illegal to sell it with closed operating system. Basically any kind of monopoly or cartel needs to be prevented. Companies should be banned from having offshore structures without legitimate business need.

Legal remedies are almost always bad. They're really only good as a last resort. Who actually wants to spend years of their time and lots of money in court over company abuses?

The true solution is technology. We need software that blocks all kinds of telemetry and advertising while also leaving all the other good functionality intact. We simply make it impossible for them to abuse our good will in any way, their business interests be damned.

It should be illegal to allow a consumer to click "terms and conditions" have been read in a super-human period of time.

Even if you actually forced a customer to read the T&C’s somehow (rather than just annoying them with a forced delay), do you think the average consumer would understand what it means and what trade offs they are making?

The “solution” isn’t forced legaleze on customers, it’s more “do what’s in the customer’s best interest” not “do whatever you can legally get away with to make the most money off them”.

No not really, but if there is a 1 hr delay because of onerous terms and conditions then perhaps a person would think twice about what they are getting in to. Or if there was a 5 minute delay to read a single paragraph perhaps people may actually read it.

> 1 hr delay

> 5 minute delay

I honestly feel that’s even more user hostile than the “onerous terms” in the first place.

I stand behind my point, if one has such “onerous terms” that something is warranted like you suggested, then the company failed and the app/service shouldn’t exist.

I agree with your sentiment, but I think you've arrived at the wrong place. People are not going to read and understand a T&C, in most cases. Tactics like delays, or even forced scrolls to "ensure" they do are farcical and ritualistic. This is obvious to everyone.

Actual "commercial relations" are based in custom, and law... not just contracts. Adam Smith talked a lot about custom, rarely about contracts.

The T&C ritual is a bureaucratic farce, our version of medieval catholic indulgences. It can only be understood anthropologically.

Can you expand on why you feel I arrived at the wrong place? Everything you said before/after indicates agreement with what I said, so I’m curious.

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