bitmapbrother

Google doesn't sell your data. Advertisers pay Google to deliver their ads to the demographic they want to target.

This article seems to have gone through multiple edits to correct all of the incorrect technical facts, but it looks like they still have work to do.

Shifting away from using Linux would help Google’s legal case that its software isn’t reliant on Oracle.

>Google didn't even develop Android, they just picked it up and filled it to the brim with their software.

What Google initially bought was no where near a commercially viable product and any remnants of that legacy code probably don't even even exist in the Android code base of today.

>only IMHO worse because Google didn't even develop Android

Sort of like how Microsoft bought MS-DOS, the foundation for Windows 1.0, from Seattle Computer Products. Except for the part where Microsoft then tried to screw them over by suing them and ultimately settling out of court.

You neglected to mention that Microsoft employees reverse engineered the YouTube API's and then, for good measure, prevented ads from appearing in the app. They also had no permission to use someone else's IP.

>All to keep WP from being viable enough to have a significant market share

This is a company that not only had to pay developers to write apps for their platform, but would also offer to write it for them. They were never going to have a significant market share because of their incompetence.

I'm waiting for the day Alphabet removes Android from Google's umbrella and is expected to contribute to the bottom line. I wonder what they'll do to make that happen... You can either licence Android for a fee or a percentage of the cost of your device. If you would like to use GMS we can also include that for an additional cost.

Their hypocrisy? Apple says privacy is a human right yet they're complicit in exposing all of their users data to a Chinese state run company. If privacy is indeed a human right then don't operate data centers in China until they change their policies.

I don't believe I've seen apps look like that since Android Cupcake. If you really want to build apps without using Java or the Android SDK you should look into Dart/Flutter.

>It was a calculated risk that had a handsome payoff,

Yes, it payed off in marketshare, but severely limited the profitability of Android and being another major revenue stream for Google. I hope this decision makes them think twice about their strategy for Fuchsia because they seem to be using the Android model all over again. Google really needs to start operating like Apple for better or worse.

>If Google "stopped licensing Android", most OEMs would fork it at least initiating.

Every OEM release of Android is forked so your statement doesn't make sense.

>Additionally, if Google were to move solely into the Pixel space, it would fail, overtaken by Samsung and other OEMs which know how to run a hardware business.

Google doesn't need to confine their OS to just Pixel devices. They can also work with any OEM that wants to ship the Google version of Android and GMS - (Nokia, Motorola, etc). Given a choice, consumers would easily choose a phone running Android with GMS over any other non iOS device. Furthermore, Google could also close source Android and not continue to give Samsung a free OS to cake their services on. The decline of Samsung as they scramble to make Tizen their only smartphone OS would be entertaining to watch.

>And without the big Android bully in the picture, it's likely new Linux-based OSes would find a place to flourish.

Yes, just like all of those desktop Linux distributions have flourished.

>You are forgetting there are dozens of manufacturers who all have large mobile phone businesses

You mean the same ones that can't write operating systems or secure their devices?

Google doesn't need to stop licensing GMS to OEM's. They simply need to stop giving it away for free and start charging OEM's to license it. And the OEM's that do license it will, of course, pass on the expenses to the consumer and raise the cost of the device. If the EU wants to stop Google from forcing OEM's to install their apps then congratulations you've now put OEM's in a position where they will now pay for GMS licensing and increase phone prices. Ironically, this decision will favor Google as the additional revenue from GMS licensing will allow them to decrease their dependency on search and further diversify their revenue streams. That 5 billion dollar fine will quickly be replenished with EU GMS licensing fees.

>The free distribution of the Android platform, and of Google’s suite of applications, is not only efficient for phone makers and operators—it’s of huge benefit for developers and consumers. If phone makers and mobile network operators couldn’t include our apps on their wide range of devices, it would upset the balance of the Android ecosystem. So far, the Android business model has meant that we haven't had to charge phone makers for our technology, or depend on a tightly controlled distribution model.[1]

https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/andro...

I'm glad the EU has fined Google 5 billion. It's finally going to make them reassess their Android open source strategy and hopefully come to the inevitable conclusion that open sourcing Android was a mistake. Hopefully, they don't repeat this same mistake with Fuchsia.

As for Google Mobile Services (GMS) - I believe the smart thing to do now would be to start charging OEM's, that sell phones in the EU, to license GMS at 5% of the cost of the device or $50 - whichever is lower. If OEM's don't want to use GMS they're free to ship their own services.

>Tons of malvertising comes through Google.

Can you cite that as your previous accusation was already proven to be incorrect.

>When one company owns the whole space, finding just one vulnerability is enormously economically attractive.

Google doesn't own the whole space.

According to a comment below the JavaScript originated from CNN and was likely used for debugging.

Do you have any proof that the ad was served by Google or are you just guessing? I was under the impression they had checks to prevent this.

It now uses Intel's HAXM on Windows to increase performance tremendously. It also allows for the saving of snapshots to launch the emulator almost instantly.

Did I miss an announcement where those other competing browsers offered a solution that consumed no additional RAM?

I can't recall any another browser maker introducing a change as encompassing as the Chrome Meltdown and Spectre fix.

The Android ART GC doesn't cause "long pauses".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFE2Utbv1Oo

Good to see Loon graduating into its own company. Project Loon was very instrumental in connecting Puerto Rico after the hurricane [1].

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/20/project-loon-att-puerto-...

>Still doesn't solve the core problem with the Android emulator - performance

When was the last time you used the emulator?

>Project panama is only targeting c, and even then will only do it a cross platform non committal fashion

John Rose of Oracle:

Panama is not just about C headers. It is about building a framework in which any data+function schema of APIs can be efficiently plugged into the JVM. So it's not just C or C++ but protocol specs and persistent memory structures and on-disk formats and stuff not invented yet. We've been relentless about designing the framework down to essential functionality (memory access and procedure calls), not just our (second-)favorite language or compiler.

The important deliverable of Panama is therefore not Posix bindings, but rather a language-neutral memory layout-and-access mechanism, plus a language-neutral (initially ABI-compliant) subroutine invocation mechanism. The jextract tool grovels over ANSI C (soon C++) schemas and translates to the layouts and function calls, bound helpfully to Java APIs with unsurprising names. But the jextract tool is just the first plugin of many.

We do look forward to building more plugins for more metadata formats outside the Java ecosystem, such as what you are building.

In fact, I expect that, in the long run, we will not build all of the plugins, but that people who invent new data schemas (or even data+function schemas or languages) will consider using our tools (layouts, binder, metadata annotations) to integrate with Java, instead of the standard technique, which is to write a set of Java native functions from scratch, or (if you are very clever) with tooling. The binder pattern, in particular, seems to be a great way to spin repetitive code for accessing data structures of all sorts, not just C or Java. I hope it will be used, eventually, in preference to static protocol compilers. The JVM is very good at on-line optimization, even of freshly spun code, so it is a natural framework for building a binder.

>They aren't doing it the way they should be in order to properly target native vectorized code.

Which is interesting since Intel is the one contributing the majority of the vector code changes.

>Threatened with a blackout in China, they rolled over like an obedient lap-dog and quietly transitioned ALL iCloud-China related compute and storage to a government controlled cloud.

The Chinese App Store generates 6-8 billion annually in revenue and that's not even including the revenue from their other services. China is also one of their largest phone markets, if not the largest, and the source of their growth so of course Apple rolled over like a lap dog and handed over the data of their Chinese users to the Chinese government. The fact that the EFF has been so silent on the the hypocrisy of Apple's privacy policy says a lot.

>Since letting kids alone on youtube, is clusterf* of a nightmare,

Could you have caked on more hyperbole? Yes, let's just let kids search the Internet and see what they come up with.

There isn't anything going on with the exception of ignorance on the part of the WSJ, Forbes and The Verge. You're explicitly granting a third party app access to your email. If I decide to use Outlook for iOS or Android I'm granting Microsoft permission to access my Apple email or Gmail.

Wait, are you saying if I install a third party app, like you know a third party email client, and give it explicit access to my Gmail account I'm giving it the ability to read my emails? The horror.

This isn't journalism. It's an ignorant hit piece by a paper owned by Murdoch. Forbes and The Verge should also be ashamed of just regurgitating the WSJ BS and not doing their due diligence.

I thought it was pretty clear. Google has no data centers in China which means they don't subject their users to unfettered government searches of their data.

I must have missed the part where Google is letting state run Chinese companies run their data centers and sharing the data with the Chinese government. When that happens then Apple and Google will be on equal footing when it comes to China.

>If you have issues with China's human rights, you should encourage your local government to take up that issue. Your post reads like a bunch of raw emotion and statements like "Tim Cook doesn't believe" that which are just impossible for anyone BUT Tim Cook to know. Relying upon supposition of what you think a person thinks, and extending that to a company to arrive at a conclusion of: money > human rights is... pretty sad as arguments go.

What's really sad is that Apple's revenue from China is far too lucrative for Tim Cook to really care about human rights and privacy. Tim Cook knows he'd probably be ousted as CEO if he ever tried to exit China.

Actually, there is something Apple can do. They can start by not offering iCloud services in China. Sure, it would be an inconvenience for many, but at least they would be protecting the privacy of their users by not sharing their data with the government.

>Google on the other hand is under no such pressure to violate their user's privacy. They could stop at any time, but have decided that the increased revenue and margins they can extract from the data is more valuable than their user's privacy.

There is also no pressure on Apple to violate their users privacy. But, they do it because China represents a large percentage of their revenue growth. If it were not for their cooperation with the Chinese government their stock would tank. China is one of their largest markets, if not the largest, so of course privacy was always going to take a back seat.

>This seems so obvious to me, I don't understand why this false equivalence is brought up so often.

Probably because of Apple's hypocrisy on privacy and human rights. It's absolutely disgusting to listen Tim Cook preach about human rights and privacy, with every interview he does, considering their business practices in China.

Your defense of Apple's cooperation with the Chinese government is repugnant. Apple could have easily decided not to open data centers in China if they really valued the privacy of their Chinese users. Tim Cook said that privacy is a human right. Apparently, Tim Cook doesn't believe Chinese citizens deserve privacy because they happily hand over all of their data to the Chinese government. It's quite clear that that the additional revenue generated by the Chinese App store and iCloud services far exceeds the human rights of their users.

>The difference between Apple and Google is that Google is doing things which may not be desirable despite no law compelling them to.

No, the difference between Apple and Google is that Google decided to leave China rather than cooperate with the government.

>If the US government (or any other government) manages to pass a law which says that Apple must turn over all the user data they have - or that they must collect certain types of data, there is nothing Apple can do other than comply - or shut shop.

Shut shop? You mean like how Google shut shop?

If your going to talk about abusing people's privacy then perhaps you should also mention how Apple abuses the privacy of their Chinese users by allowing the Chinese Government to have unfettered access to all of their cloud data.

Please. The pins would be dull and rounded.