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Comment by aboringusername | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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