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The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android

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Re: The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android

#281

Post by clwg »

kpremote wrote: post #267

Curious to know, are there ways that a country (in fact mainly the U.S.) can 'flip the switch' (weaponize, if you will) on fundamental internet tech, such as DNS, TCP/IP, HTTP and many many others, to severely affect a foreign adversary's business (either a company or a country)? Sure those are merely standards/protocols, still, is it possible these tech and their current world-wide setup be effectively used in confl…

Fundamentally I would say yes, however most of the countries that the US would likely do this to (Russia, Iran, China, Cuba) have contingencies in place through the implementation of country wide intranets[0][1]. Within those countries you also have localized social, financial and e-commerce services that minimize the general populations dependency on foreign companies and services.

So the US could cut cut them off or manipulate their connectivity to the global internet through something like BGP or DNS, but the impact would be far less than the US doing that against a country such as Canada that has a deep reliance on US infrastructure and services.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/12/great-firewall... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_intranet

Re: The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android

#282

Post by gruez »

pmlnr wrote: post #207
gruez wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that doesn't have a malware-able god process called zygote What?

https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/triada-trojan/11481/

Is this really an issue? Presumably you need some sort of privilege escalation exploit to modify zygote. At that point you could also modify other processes as well. It might make exploitation slightly easier, but it's not really a vulurability.

Re: The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android

#284

Post by pjmlp »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #265
jdright wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After this fiasco, I'm more than ever willing to change to Huawei. Best yet if they change to a platform not based on Android. I'm done with Google (and Android soon) in every possible way.

Uh, so an app store without: Netflix, YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook, Gmail, Outlook, Chromecast, Dropbox, OneDrive, YouTube, Twitter, Google search ( or duck duck go), Amazon, Amazon video, 2fa authenticator, iftt, Wikipedia, Skype, messenger, Snapchat, Instagram, Waze, Google maps, Ted, Wolfram Alpha, ... I'm pretty sure there is one of them that you use recurringly. You're going to use that OS? The only Chinese app I…

Not everyone uses them.

Re: The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android

#285

Post by gpm »

jeremyjh wrote: post #124
necovek wrote: post #52

The article links to an interesting view on how even AOSP is a no-go for Huawei: https://www.xda-developers.com/analysis-huawei-aosp-google-b... What I find interesting is that Apache Licensed software can be relicensed even in proprietary form (as long as you make it a derivative work, with your derivative bits with a proprietary license), thus the easy way out seems to be to have a non-US entity make a proprietary…

I believe that if Google doesn't license AOSP to Huawei (whether by their own free choice or not), it might be that they are in violation of the Linux kernel GPL2 agreement that they have made with Linus / Linux Foundation.

As long as no one distributes it (binary or code) to Huawei I don't think they would be in violation of the license. They aren't personally required to do so.

But anyone with access to the binaries (not in the US I guess) is allowed to redistribute it to Huawei, and the GPL then requires google to grant Huawei a license, not doing so would appear to be in violation of the license.

> 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided [irrelevant terms here]

> 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

IANAL

Re: The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android

#287

Post by pjmlp »

pizza wrote: post #24
baybal2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google bought this platform with every dollar invested over more than a decade, they didn't do this only so that Apple had a competitor, but so that THEY had control over mobile eyeballs. Google's biggest trick was developers. They leveraged the decaying state of Java, and it being the default CS language in a lot of places. They simple showed a more attractive opportunity to tenths of thousands of Java devs stuck…

Makes me think whoever comes up with a mainstreamed way to do cross-platform mobile apps in Python will easily capture a large share of recent college grads, too, then.

Symbian supported Python actually.

Re: The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android

#289

Post by cameronbrown »

rchaud wrote: post #220
_iyig wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’d be a better world if Europe could give people more choices by... giving them more choices, instead of regulating the choices that other countries provide and fundamentally control.

The purpose of regulation is to change the environment to allow for a more level playing field. Where would Spotify have been if the EC didn't force MS to unbundle Windows Media Player from installs of Win XP in 2004? For those who don't remember, WMP 9 already had streaming radio via the MSN entertainment arm. Competition doesn't happen overnight. The changes need to be in place for some period of time before entrep…

This completely disregards mobile - without which Spotify was completely irrelevant. Un-bundling WMP, in the long run, did virtually nothing.

Re: The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android

#290

Post by cameronbrown »

ovi256 wrote: post #206
bertomartin wrote: post #191

My feeling is that this whole silliness will backfire spectacularly! Huawei will develop their own OS. It's hard but not impossible. Who cares if there's buy-in from the entire developer community...nowadays people don't use apps that much anyways. Apps are just another way of consumption. Most apps can probably be replaced with webviews with little lost of functionality. I don't know enough about the technical diffi…

30% of smartphones sold in the EU in 2019Q1 were Huawei. You can bet that no bank or whatever will abandon such a large fraction of the users of their app, but is already calling people to get the Huawei OS version of their app started. Especially given that Huawei OS looks to be a fork of AOSP with the proprietary Google Services replaced with proprietary Huawei services. The developpers will just fork the existing…

People won't buy a phone without Snapchat or Instagram who can't actually implement said support without violating the Huawei ban.
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