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Google suspends some business with Huawei

reuters.com

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Re: Google suspends some business with Huawei

#101

Post by crdoconnor »

onei wrote: post #72

I guess this is a thinly veiled attack on China, but I'm a bit confused why there's a feud between the US and China in the first place. Perhaps my ignorance is down to being British and a bit out of the loop, but could someone give a rough outline on what the underlying motives for this are?

Motives:

* Trump has been on at China for a long time.

* US establishment growing increasingly worried about the sophistication of Chinese tech and are viewing Huawei as a strategic threat. Especially since the latest generation of Chinese telecoms tech has arguably leapfrogged western offerings. Free trade works brilliantly until you stop being the top dog.

* NSA doesn't the idea of Chinese being able to use their tech to spy on US. They'd prefer domestic US companies build tech to spy on us for them instead.

* "National security concerns" is kind of a "get of jail free card" when it comes to escaping WTO rules on protectionism, so it fits in pretty well with the rest of the trade war.

Re: Google suspends some business with Huawei

#102

Post by Markoff »

ETHisso2017 wrote: post #43

Quick question - if someone buys a Huawei phone without Play Store and Gmail, could they just download those things later? E.g. could it be done aftermarket?

they have their own AppGallery store and email app, after all gmail it's crap compared to Nine, Aqua mail or Maildroid, honestly don't understand people using it

so in the end bakery competition could benefit from this Google push, dev can choose another store not stealing 30% of their money

Re: Google suspends some business with Huawei

#103

Post by mcintyre1994 »

judge2020 wrote: post #12
mrosett wrote: post #7

Alternative headline: “Google complies with law”. They didn’t have much choice here.

Otherwise, the article is good for showing the extent of the political situation. One might be able to stretch this to 'US aids potential cyber attacks in China' since phones in China might no longer receive security updates in Android.

Don't phones in China already not use proprietary Google stuff? The cyber attacks being aided here are surely on Huawei owners outside of China (US/Europe mostly I expect?) where their phone shipped with Google Play and could get Google updates/other services?

Re: Google suspends some business with Huawei

#104

Post by angel_j »

scarface74 wrote: post #61
angel_j wrote: post #22

All I know about Huawei is that they produced what seemed like at least half of welfware phones—the kind available to anybody on most any kind of welfare, including EBT—and these phones were utter garbage. Reasonably, one could say they had ripped off the government, these phones were such crap. Screen a .5mm pane of brittle glass that a tap could break. Barely ran android, laden with crapware, basically needed to be…

And this is different than almost all of the sub $100 phones sold through companies like MetroPCS?

Your Tax Dollars At Work different.

Re: Google suspends some business with Huawei

#105

Post by StudentStuff »

onei wrote: post #64
philwelch wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your phone was manufactured by a front for a foreign intelligence service. It was never secure.

Just to play devil's advocate, do you have any citations for that statement?

I'd hardly presume Huawei is a front for a foreign intelligence service, but their software for cellular basestations is extremely vulnerable (hundreds of different vulnerable versions of OpenSSL sprinkled through) and they still can't be bothered to use version control, despite committing to address both issues back in 2012: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-huawei-bri...

Huawei's products are vulnerable by default, anyone can look up the applicable CVEs and run the proof of concept code for said CVE to pop a shell. China doesn't have exclusive access :)

Re: Google suspends some business with Huawei

#106

Post by kuyan »

wpdev_63 wrote: post #75

Sad to see as they make some compelling phones with outrageously great prices[0]. I used to think about the privacy problems with buying a chinese phone but this day and age where facebook is selling your data to the highest bidder and the fusion centers crawling all over our cellphone - who cares? I'd rather have the chinese have my data than the US companies/gov't(only because I will never visit their country), tho…

It seems so, though my personal experience with their phones has been hit and miss. The specs look great on the box, but the phones themselves seem to have poor QC and support when things go wrong.

That said, others have only had good experiences. YMMV.

Re: Google suspends some business with Huawei

#107

Post by skvark »

Creationer wrote: post #28

At what point does China just develop its own mobile OS? There seems value in just taking the reigns, and making whatever you create open-source, so that ZTE and all the other Chinese manufacturers can use it as well. Its certainly a major blow to the value of Huawei phones.

It was announced in 2017 that China was investing in its own mobile OS based on Sailfish OS (http://www.goodnewsfinland.com/jolla-goes-full-steam-ahead-i...). I don't know what's the status of the project currently. Russia has had similar plans (http://rusletter.com/articles/operating_system_sailfish_from...).

Re: Google suspends some business with Huawei

#108

Post by mrep »

StringyBob wrote: post #53
plantain wrote: post #14

No more updates for my Huawei phone then presumably. Really feeling more secure now!

Google have no choice but to comply with US law. This is now going to make a load of existing US owned (Huawei manufactured) devices less secure unless an exemption is agreed for things like software security updates. Not only that, the ban encourages a long term move away from US-based tech as alternatives are needed within China. This new tech will ultimately be available worldwide, but no longer owned or controlle…

> the ban encourages a long term move away from US-based tech as alternatives are needed within China.

China blocked Google play years ago and repeatedly blocks every attempt Google tries to make to relaunch back into china [0] so they did that a long time ago.

[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/17/google-misses-out-on-billion...

Re: Google suspends some business with Huawei

#109

Post by Markoff »

fffrantz wrote: post #18

If this also revokes the GMS agreements, it will have a much larger impact than the updates part. A whole lot of things on Android are dependant on the GMS, such as push notifications for certain apps, cloud storage of user data, and a lot more. Let's see where the it all ends up, but this may turn to be an enormous crippling move for Android on Huawei/Honor devices.

considering Huawei, xiaomi, BBK, lenorola control majority of market everywhere outside US one would say it's quite opposite, they just need to convince Samsung to join them and Google with their Google play services it's past and they can keep their small market with their pixel phones thinking about their importance and that devs charging 30% it's moral

Re: Google suspends some business with Huawei

#110

Post by sonnyblarney »

yding wrote: post #16
dirtyid wrote: post #2

If true, this is certainly a nuclear move. There's a variety of first party app stores in China, though I doubt they'll see much success convincing Western users to switch. Curious if there's going to be antitrust fallout from markets outside the US for unilaterally crippling vendors at behest of US foreign policy. Is Microsoft or Apple going to pull their app stores as well? What happened to project Dragon Fly? On t…

The biggest threat to Google in my opinion would be the possibility that Huawei and China could try to "steal" Android from them. Imagine in 2021 the Chinese government mandates that every Chinese smartphone manufacturer needs to switch to ChAndroid for all of their product lines, with a single unified app store, whether they sell the phones inside or outside of China. Well, fully half of the top smartphone companies…

This is already the case, economically.

Android is open source, these vendors are free to fork and do whatever.

The lion's haul for Google is not 'app store sales' in China , it's search.

Android is not about App Store, that's just a marginal thing - it's about owning and controlling search everywhere. It's a means to extend their primary product.

Samsung can make it's own app store tomorrow, but they're not going to get 'Google Search' - which is what people want - so they'll have to do for now.

As far as Huawei ... well, open trade can only be had by like economies. If one economy can externalize pollution, labour costs, healthcare, and the other can't - then there cannot be open trade. Same thing for more contentious issues such as IP theft, foreign ownership rules, capital controls, state control of enterprises.

Huawei is the example, the tip of the spear. It hardly even matters what the degree of materiality is, that said, there should be not question that there's existential risk with Huawei. The CCP can require Huawei to do whatever, at any time, and Huawei will happily comply.

China can't enjoy the advantages of a 'developing economy' while trying to put 1st tier industries form advanced economies out of business, it's not going to sit well.

So we saw the big rise of China, now they're slowing down to 'nice growth' instead of crazy growth, they're grabbing land and industry so the West is wary. Meaning the trade rules will change.

This is the new normal.

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