How Google Controls Android: Digging into the Skyhook Filings | Hacker News Reader

How Google Controls Android: Digging into the Skyhook Filings

thisismynext.com

82 pointskenjackson19 comments

Lots of interesting stuff in the story.

For example the part where Google blocks Motorola from using Skyhook, but then Samsung ships with Skyhook. Moto goes back to Google to request a waiver so it can ship Skyhook:

"•Google denied the waiver on June 22, saying that Andy Rubin had already denied Sanjay Jha’s request for a waiver. Oh, and “compatibility is a learning process,” and “Motorola should not be concerned with other OEMs and their devices.” Look not at the world, Motorola. Look only inside yourself."

How can a phone company not be concerned with other OEMs and their devices? That's like telling Google to not be concerned with other search engines.

The announcement that they were going to strengthen the requirements on vendors to get the Google apps received enthusiastic applause at Google IO. Manufacturers and carriers have shown a desire to "differentiate" their offers even if it means installing crapware that slows down their ability to keep up with platform updates.

I think Google is taking the right steps to keep Android a high quality platform to the benefit of developers and end users.

I agree. At some point, openness for vendors/carriers is in tension with openness for users. As a user, I'm happy to see Google clamp down on the vendors/carriers, if it means they're finally taking my side. Hopefully that's what it means. (I'm encouraged to see that ChromeOS hardware will be mandated to be jailbreakable.)

On the face of it, it just seems like clever agreement drafting by Google. Google's agreement with Motorola requires Motorola to allow location data collection by Google, whereas it's agreement with Skyhook explicitly forbids it. At that point, it's simply a question of Motorola choosing its most valuable partner. Whether this is anticompetitive or not is clearly up for question. Regardless, it's become really clear that Google has far more power over shipping devices than it has ever admitted in public.

This is extremely interesting. One thing I didn't understand was how this location database is being built. Is Google collecting GPS signals and WIFI hotspots so that the two can be associated to pinpoint your location? If so, does that mean Android phones are periodically sending your location back to Google? Do Apple, Nokia, RIM, and Microsoft do the same thing?

pretty much every vendor has an agreement with skyhook to share this kind of information.

Yes, exactly. And that's what the fight is over. Google doesn't want to get cut out from having android phones send them the wifi points they see as Google needs that data to build their database.

Apple used to use Skyhook and more recently has created their own by having iPhones send them data. The recent privacy blow up over the iPhone's keeping a location log wasn't actually the user's location, but a cache of their version of the skyhook database.

> Do Apple, Nokia, RIM, and Microsoft do the same thing?

Yes, they're all doing this.

If you tell an Android phone to use visible WiFi access points to narrow down your location, you're giving it permission to send that info to Google in order to query the database --- and, of course, to help them build it up. At least with the "stock" Android skin (as seen on my Nexus One) the dialog box you get to enable WiFi use is explicit that it's sending location info elsewhere.

(You can say no; I did, and the phone periodically whines at me that I'm not getting the best possible location fixes because of it. But that may still not completely cut off the flow of location data to the cloud. You can infer a lot about peoples' locations and intentions from a Google Maps query stream even if they don't come labeled as "this is my current location" --- and it's hard to tell from the outside which of them do.)

A piece I may have just missed in the article is what the advantage of using Skyhook is/was over the Google offering.

From the Skyhook website:

Skyhook's Devices can easily provide location-awareness to any Wi-Fi enabled device. Its portable architecture delivers location while minimizing device-specific implementation time. Skyhook's Core Engine is an entirely software-only location system and does not require specialized hardware chipsets. The lightweight client can be configured to run across a broad range of mobile operating systems, devices and platforms.

So was the advantage just speed of implementation and the cost of the hardware?

Google and Skyhook both do the same thing: their code can locate a device via what wifi access points it can see. This requires significantly less battery than GPS and it also is much more accurate in buildings and urban areas (where GPS doesn't work well).

The advantage seemed to be the perception (based in reality or not) that Skyhook's services resulted in better (faster/more reliable) results than Google's offering. It's possible that Skyhook's sales team just did a better job of selling an identical product, but the e-mails seem to indicate that Google definitely had historically offered an inferior product (thought they felt their current offering was equal to or better than Skyhook's).

It is interesting how quick the Googlers were to dismiss Motorola's test. Rather than understand what their potential customer looked for in their product, they simply said "we tested it in San Francisco and our results were better".

Apart from me being a bit shocked at how this seems like evil (and Google "Does no evil") this raised an interesting issue: Look at how rabid Google is about Data.

Is Google stupid enough to be damned by forgetting history? This all sounds too much like Microsoft in the Antitrust era.

It's a freaking location database. You don't risk bad PR and anti competitive label for WiFi location data. All phones pretty much can do cell tower based or proper AGPS based location.

Nilay Patel always writes interesting stuff, glad he's in technology.

Looks anticompetitive to me folks. They're using their dominant position in mobile to support their dominant position in location. Someone's head needs to roll over this.

I'm not going to defend the behavior ethically, but this isn't clear to me legally. It's not at all clear that their "dominant" in either of these sectors. Currently Android is just barely ahead of iOS in smart phones, and at the time of the detailed events lagged substantially.

There's nothing legally wrong with "bundling" one product with another. It happens all the time, in all sorts of markets. It only becomes a problem under antitrust law, and I don't see Android as a monopoly yet.

But yeah, it's a little shady. Clearly there is harm to the user base if there isn't robust competition for location services.

It's funny to see Mac advocates criticize Google for letting Android go wild and suffer fragmentation from it and then criticize them as well if they decide to enforce a few rules to improve consistency.

Damned if you do...

I see it as two separate concerns. The first time around, folks criticized the result of the "open" nature of the platform (i.e. fragmentation). Now, these folks are criticizing the so-called hypocrisy in the "open" mantra itself.

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