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Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

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Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#121

Post by intricatedetail »

swiley wrote: post #79
aboringusername wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fav…

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…

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.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#122

Post by martinald »

cstross wrote: post #52
dalbasal wrote: post #39

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…

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…

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.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#123

Post by martinald »

Angostura wrote: post #59
cstross wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#124

Post by rm445 »

tomrod wrote: post #84
izacus wrote: post #15

> Under active use, Android devices transfer about 11.6MB of data to Google servers daily, or 350MB per month, it's claimed, which is about half the amount transferred by an iPhone. Interesting, so 350MB of data per month is abuse, iPhones 175MB per month isn't. I guess Google now has to half their data use for it to be at parity with Apple and we're all fine?

As others mentioned, you have the value backwards. That said, the right amount of auto transfer of content should be close to 0,a few bytes to notify of updates may be reasonable. Certainly we don't need to have books-worth of software and content transferred without the phone's owner agreeing with that agreement used with extremely narrow scope (I use the word owner here colloquially, as the user paid for the phone)…

At the user's preference, if they don't mind the data use, pre-loading content could improve the user experience.

That kinda supposes it's content the user wants. But what if it's data, like ads, that the user doesn't exactly want but they're going to get anyway? I don't know where the lawsuit will end up, but I can see this ending up as a buried, default-on, setting that most users will never change.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#125

Post by t0astbread »

dogma1138 wrote: post #103
deeter72 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally feel like, Apple is the best choice for the time being until actual daily usable Linux high end phones are a reality. Apple although has highly monopolistic practices are privacy oriented and are interested on just selling the physical device.

Linux high end phones will never be a reality, at least not what people here would consider Linux at best you’ll get is Android or Android like OS. Other than that you’ll get low volume low end devices at high end or higher prices due to lack of economy of scale. What most consumers actually want and I’ll put in that list also many many people that say they want a “Linux Phone” but in reality will go back to their iP…

I guess what people want when they say they want a "Linux phone" is a phone that allows them to hack, mix and match their system the way they can on a desktop Linux system.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#126

Post by Silhouette »

dogma1138 wrote: post #103
deeter72 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally feel like, Apple is the best choice for the time being until actual daily usable Linux high end phones are a reality. Apple although has highly monopolistic practices are privacy oriented and are interested on just selling the physical device.

Linux high end phones will never be a reality, at least not what people here would consider Linux at best you’ll get is Android or Android like OS. Other than that you’ll get low volume low end devices at high end or higher prices due to lack of economy of scale. What most consumers actually want and I’ll put in that list also many many people that say they want a “Linux Phone” but in reality will go back to their iP…

Usually I'm a sceptic about Linux taking over the world, but this is actually the one situation where I could believe substantial progress might be made. If someone developed a slick UI for the basic phone functionality and a genuinely open Linux-based platform, provided compatibility with the major APIs needed to write Android apps so portability was easy, and maybe even funded the whole thing using an app store that took a fraction of the cut that Google and Apple demand, I could see that sort of model gaining enough traction to be viable.

Unlike on the desktop, most important phone apps aren't so large and complicated that they couldn't be ported to or reimplemented on a new platform with a realistic amount of effort. You could offer a significantly better developer experience than either of the dominant platforms today, which would be essential to supporting the apps users expect to find available on any mobile platform today but also potentially attracting some unique and better apps over the longer term.

From the user's side, they'd be genuinely in control of their own device. There could be real security, stability and privacy benefits as a result, and you could do away with a lot of the things that annoy users of current mobile platforms.

As ever, the problem is how to bootstrap a two-sided market. It would probably have to be extremely easy for developers to port their existing Android apps. You might also have to convince one of the major phone manufacturers who can make good hardware at competitive prices to support your platform as an option, or possibly make it easy to install it as a replacement on existing phones. But with the right promotional strategy even these things don't seem totally out of the question. It's a huge potential market, on a scale where one or more well-capitalised big players in the industry could potentially take an interest.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#128

Post by bashinator »

generalizations wrote: post #120
qz2 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m working on the same thing and the phone at the moment. I doubt I’ll be able to go cold turkey so I’m blowing one app away every two weeks until I don’t need it any more. It’s not as hard as it felt like it was going to be.

Maps with live traffic is going to be the tough one; at least it is for me.

This would have been a dealbreaker for me, but now that my company has permanent WFH, live traffic is much more of a would-be-nice.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#129

Post by itronitron »

deeter72 wrote: post #98
luord wrote: post #93

Between this and Jeffrey Paul's article shared yesterday about Big Sur and Apple Silicon[1], it's becoming increasingly tempting to throw my phone away and keep using only Linux with no applications primarily developed by these giants (i.e. no Chromium, etc). Supporting initiatives like the Librem phone is also moving up in my list of priorities, once I get enough money to spare at least. [1]: https://news.ycombinato…

I personally feel like, Apple is the best choice for the time being until actual daily usable Linux high end phones are a reality. Apple although has highly monopolistic practices are privacy oriented and are interested on just selling the physical device.

The highly monopolistic practices are much less of an issue if you don't install any apps.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#130

Post by bashinator »

Silhouette wrote: post #126
dogma1138 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux high end phones will never be a reality, at least not what people here would consider Linux at best you’ll get is Android or Android like OS. Other than that you’ll get low volume low end devices at high end or higher prices due to lack of economy of scale. What most consumers actually want and I’ll put in that list also many many people that say they want a “Linux Phone” but in reality will go back to their iP…

Usually I'm a sceptic about Linux taking over the world, but this is actually the one situation where I could believe substantial progress might be made. If someone developed a slick UI for the basic phone functionality and a genuinely open Linux-based platform, provided compatibility with the major APIs needed to write Android apps so portability was easy, and maybe even funded the whole thing using an app store tha…

Didn’t Canonical try to do something like this?
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