Malicious apps infect 25M Android devices with 'Agent Smith' malware

>A less generous take on that would be that he/Apple also wanted to push their app store.

The App Store didn't exist at that time.

Well, its hard to feel any sympathy for Google here. Google forces their android partners to include Google's own apps and keep them updated. They could also have made Android security updates mandatory. MS still got the blame when Windows systems got exploited using bugs that were fixed ages ago. Its unfair, but that's just the nature of the beast...

That’s not an accurate representation of what happened.

When Apple/Steve Jobs went into negotiations with Verizon and AT&T (then known as Cingular), it didn’t have any leverage. In fact, Verizon wouldn’t sign the deal in part because of the control Steve Jobs wanted over the devices. AT&T agreed to get the exclusive.

BlackBerry was King when the iPhone launched and BlackBerry bent over backwards to do whatever the carrier wanted (the book Losing the Signal has great details on this).

Google could have depended on similar provisions with Verizon when the Droid launched in 2009 or with T-Mobile when the G1 launched in 2008. Both carriers wanted an iPhone killer.

But Google didn’t do that. It did force Verizon not to put Bing as the default search engine on some of Verizon’s Android phones (like the Droid series), despite an early 2009 agreement Verizon made to make Bing its default search engine — and it also negotiated to NOT force consumers to pay for Android apps using the carrier stores (something many carriers had required for previous non-Apple App Stores), once paid apps launched.

But it didn’t negotiate the update bit, even though the company had the leverage to do it.

I can only speculate the reasons why, but based on the number of books I’ve read, people I’ve talked to, and and other information, it strikes me that Google decided it was more advantageous to let any phone maker or carrier adopt its OS to gain marketshare, rather than worrying about device fragmentation or security update issues.

And that strategy worked beautifully and Android took over the world. The problem is getting carriers or device makers to update, especially when many have spent lots of time customizing Android as a way of differentiating themselves.

But it’s unfair to claim Google didn’t have the opportunity to make the deal Apple did. Google just didn’t want to do that and wasn’t willing to walk away from a partnership to have that level of control.

New title: Security researchers did a thing. Article body: See title.

"Oh boy! A whole bunch of people are going to be really boned by a malicious app, but we're not going to let you know any details. Hey, do you bank on your phone? Ooooo you might be realllllly screwed. The competing platform is better and/or worse for thee pedantic reasons, says some random person you've never heard of and will probably never hear from again."

If you're not reporting the name of the company or apps involved, don't waste everyone's fucking time. It's even more egregious than the news doing the whole, "Something in your pantry could kill everyone you ever loved. Details after these commercials."

Sure it puts pressure on device makers to be on the ball with security updates, but at the end of the day there's nothing anyone can do. They don't tell you the symptoms of being infected, how to prevent becoming infected (don't click ads to prevent activating the virus, but do I just never install another app from here on out), or even what to do if you are infected (will a factory wipe work, or does it install to recovery, too?).

I submit the following similarly useful mini-article:

Something in 500,000 grocery stores is causing customers to experience explosive diarrhea. Local law enforcement is investigating, so we're not going to tell you what the item was. Oops! We mean itemS. I mean, there were a LOT of them. Dr. Flabenpoop of the Central Alabama Subcommittee for Safety of Food and Other Eatin' Things reminds consumers that eating is essential to remain among the living and excessive diarrhea can lead to dehydration and death. He recommends NOT experiencing excessive diarrhea while maintaining a balanced diet. He also notes that the two-fingered spotted wallaby cannot get diarrhea, which begs the question: Is it better to be a wallaby or a human? Or a stick? I mean, sticks don't poop at all, so they must feel lucky. Or sticky. But not sticky from poop.

That is the linked article. Both reports provide the same level of actionable information, the same who cares commentary, and same less than half-heartedly rehash of some inane comparison to pad the word count.

tl;dr - Zero useful information released by the research team, zero useful information in the article.