11 ms·

The Walled Garden Has Won

89 points by joshbert 16y ago

Estragon 16y ago
So, you can root most android phones. Surely someone has figured out how to disable Google's kill-switch once that's done?
- liljimmytables 16y ago
  You don't even need to root it, just one tweak to your settings and you can download an apk from anywhere you like. If you get your apks this way they aren't market-managed and have no magic kill switch. Market isn't so much a walled garden but a preferred vendor, in the same way that a Debian repository is.
  - Estragon 16y ago
    Thanks for the information. Do you have a cite for the fact that non-Market applications aren't subject to the kill switch?
- getsat 16y ago
  Wow, that never occurred to me. User installs malicious app, app roots phone and disables killswitch, user is none the wiser. Game over.
- SilentMobius 16y ago
  Gah, so much misinformation. There is no "Kill switch" in Android, the Market App has permission to uninstall applications, it also receives push notifications from market servers that can include instructions to uninstall an app. The Android market is _not_ part of the OS, if you build straight from AOSP you don't get the market app, no app no "kill switch"
  - Estragon 16y ago
    There is no "Kill switch" in Android That's the terminology used in TFA, so the meaning is clear from context. Get over yourself.
codyguy 16y ago
..For now...
Kylekramer 16y ago
I guess with that loose of a definition, Android could be a walled garden. But once you get past the broad strokes, the walled garden of "we have a kill switch and could potentially use it for anything, but so far only for security purposes" and the walled garden of "we approve everything unless you exploit a security hole and have blocks apps just because it was in our interest" are very different. There is always a balance of security and freedom. To this point, I'd say Google has erred on the side of freedom. And at least with Android, if Google were to go rogue in a doomsday scenario, we could always fork it.
- TillE 16y ago
  The most important point about Android is that apps can be installed from third-party sources just by toggling a switch in the settings on the stock firmware. While Google probably technically could use the remote uninstall function on an app not installed via their Market, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that they would. And as you suggest, there already exists CyanogenMod and other third-party firmwares; it's fairly easy to strip Android of any connection to Google if you so desire.
bergie 16y ago
There is a more transparent and fair way to run quality assurance and acceptance procedures. This is what we do at Maemo: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/application_quality_assurance_in_linux_distributions/ http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/application_quality_assurance_in_l...
stcredzero 16y ago
What people need to realize, is that there is a reason why the free-ranging cowboy had to stop existing, all the cowboy-poetry about the sadness of barbed wire fences notwithstanding. More order means more economic activity. If you have any knowledge about security and cryptography, and you start planning out the security for a new kind of app, one keeps on running into difficulties, one after another. It just occurred to me the other day that these difficulties are just like the ones 3rd world businesspeople face. As far as security goes, we are living with a poverty of infrastructure. Basically, too much of the information infrastructure is broken, to the extent that we can't do diamond-hard key management. Secure medical information through the browser? People are in fear of regulation sets like HIPPA, because browsers are one of the richest sources of security holes! Private information? People say ridiculous stuff like "privacy is dead" and young women just hope the pics their ex-boyfriends posted are lost in the throngs of other evilly posted pics on the internet. It's insanity. How is this any different than someone in the 3rd world trying to build a widget delivery business, but finds that the roads are rotten, he can't get parts for his trucks, and he has to bribe people to let his trucks past, bribe people to let his warehouses be unmolested, and to get the business license in the first place? In terms of security, even the 1st world is like the 3rd world. The upshot: whoever attempts building the internet's first mature security infrastructure will have huge risks. Whoever succeeds will make billions of dollars. My startup is doing precisely this. If you understand what I am saying, you can email my username at gmail dot com. Google gets it. This is what they're trying to do with Chrome. This is how it will start. People will try to build little pockets, little pieces of infrastructure. These are the walled gardens. Some will fail. Some will succeed and even interconnect. Eventually, workable networks will securely connect the entire world.
- fierarul 16y ago
  You wrote a long post but could you perhaps expand it even more? Perhaps in an article? I don't see how "more order means more economic activity": if anything, I associate "more order" with more bureaucracy and higher barrier to entry for new economic agents.
  - bdr 16y ago
lukeschlather 16y ago
>Not so long ago, people were outraged that Amazon could and did arbitrarily delete books from users’ Kindles; last week they clamored for Google to exercise essentially the same power. There's a significant difference between code and data. Similarly, when AOL lost to the open web, it wasn't because their code was closed, it was because their community and their content was closed. In a similar manner, iTunes needs to offer a web client if it wants to compete with Amazon, Google, and the rest in the long run. Or at least make Android/WebOS apps.
Xuzz 16y ago
(For what it's worth, the popular jailbreak app SBSettings includes a switch to disable Apple's iOS kill switch. I assume that rooted Android phones also have that possibility.)
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
KevBurnsJr 16y ago
That quip about Kindle book deletion is rather like Borders saying "We're going to sell you this book, but we reserve the right break into your house and burn it whenever we like."
- bl4k 16y ago
  no because you own the physical paper but only a license for the content
  - endgame 16y ago
    Which is exactly the problem. See also : http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    - bl4k 16y ago
      ye but what I am saying is that the analogy isn't 100% correct. It is more like going into your house and telling you that you aren't allowed to read the book anymore I didn't say I agree with it, that is just the way it works
  - Tichy 16y ago
    What is the difference between owning some physical paper and some pyhsical bits on a memory card? In both cases I own something physical that I can use to extract a books content.
tel 16y ago
I want to reset this perennial argument into new terms for a moment. Apple has long branded itself not as a walled garden but instead as a "human focused technology design" company. From this perspective you might instead see Walled Garden as a symptom of a dominating human focus. Once you're looking at human-driven innovation and technology-driven innovation, you can start to see some major differences. Human-driven pulls money whenever it brings high technology to people's lives in a more synchronized fashion. Technology-driven pulls money when it invents something so new it literally shifts the power structure into groups of those who have it and those who don't. I find it pretty liberating that human-focused innovation is having such a renaissance right now. I don't feel so hurt if it's at a (possibly small, globally) cost to technological innovation since Apple clearly optimizes for psychology. I feel like real technological innovation can still happen as well, but a walled garden acts as a filter that separates those who just made the next poorly designed CRUD application from those who'll get bought. I'll still add that it's a little scary since I have an engineering fear of big monolithic entities like Apple and Google over well-organized, loose-integrated, and smaller guys.
trotsky 16y ago
Post facto removal doesn't meet any reasonable definition of a walled garden though. If it did, then the monthly push of the windows malicious software removal tool would make windows a walled garden. Since Windows clearly doesn't fit the definition of a walled garden, you really can't use the same functionality as a reason to call Android one. The only difference here is that it is harder to disable Android's remote push/remote kill. As is noted though it would be relatively easy for manufacturers or AOSP based projects to disable those market functionalities or provide an alternative market. Presumably if they are given a reason to want to some will.
alanstorm 16y ago
Nothing ever wins, pendulums just swing.
- cageface 16y ago
  Thesis -> antithesis -> synthesis.
kenjackson 16y ago
The article doesn't mention Facebook, which seems like the front-runner to the walled garden of eden. I can see Facebook doing their own browser and their own phone at some point. The already have the core app store in place and advertising platform. And of course they have the eyeballs. Facebook becomes the internet you go to when you care about knowing who you're dealing with. IMO this is bigger than Google/Chrome, iOS, or Android.
callumjones 16y ago
I wouldn't say there's a winner just yet, it's still early days in the life of smartphone OSes.
wrinklz 16y ago
POS wordpress blog covers the entire first page of text to tell me that I have JS turned off. I know that, dipshits, show me the damn blog...
- tzs 16y ago
  What are you talking about? With Javascript disabled the only difference I see is that the advertisement below the story is missing.
fluidcruft 16y ago
Re: Google's remote "kill switch" saving the day against DroidDream. All the kill switch did was remove the horse after the soldiers had already jumped out. But Google got super lucky and was able to also fool these particular soldiers to commit suicide. On Android phones /system is read only. To make changes there you have to get root--then you can remount /system read-write and make modifications there. DroidDream did that and installed a root shell in /system/bin/profile. To remove the infection, Google used DroidDream's own root shell. Now imagine DroidDream's /system/bin/profile didn't just accept any old command directed at it by just anybody (perhaps simply using public key cryptography). Could Google have removed from a non-rooted phone?

89 points by joshbert 16y ago

So, you can root most android phones. Surely someone has figured out how to disable Google's kill-switch once that's done?

liljimmytables 16y ago
You don't even need to root it, just one tweak to your settings and you can download an apk from anywhere you like. If you get your apks this way they aren't market-managed and have no magic kill switch. Market isn't so much a walled garden but a preferred vendor, in the same way that a Debian repository is.
- Estragon 16y ago
  Thanks for the information. Do you have a cite for the fact that non-Market applications aren't subject to the kill switch?
getsat 16y ago
Wow, that never occurred to me. User installs malicious app, app roots phone and disables killswitch, user is none the wiser. Game over.
SilentMobius 16y ago
Gah, so much misinformation. There is no "Kill switch" in Android, the Market App has permission to uninstall applications, it also receives push notifications from market servers that can include instructions to uninstall an app. The Android market is _not_ part of the OS, if you build straight from AOSP you don't get the market app, no app no "kill switch"
- Estragon 16y ago
  There is no "Kill switch" in Android That's the terminology used in TFA, so the meaning is clear from context. Get over yourself.

codyguy 16y ago

..For now...

Kylekramer 16y ago

I guess with that loose of a definition, Android could be a walled garden. But once you get past the broad strokes, the walled garden of "we have a kill switch and could potentially use it for anything, but so far only for security purposes" and the walled garden of "we approve everything unless you exploit a security hole and have blocks apps just because it was in our interest" are very different. There is always a balance of security and freedom. To this point, I'd say Google has erred on the side of freedom. And at least with Android, if Google were to go rogue in a doomsday scenario, we could always fork it.

TillE 16y ago
The most important point about Android is that apps can be installed from third-party sources just by toggling a switch in the settings on the stock firmware. While Google probably technically could use the remote uninstall function on an app not installed via their Market, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that they would. And as you suggest, there already exists CyanogenMod and other third-party firmwares; it's fairly easy to strip Android of any connection to Google if you so desire.

bergie 16y ago

There is a more transparent and fair way to run quality assurance and acceptance procedures. This is what we do at Maemo: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/application_quality_assurance_in_linux_distributions/ http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/application_quality_assurance_in_l...

stcredzero 16y ago

What people need to realize, is that there is a reason why the free-ranging cowboy had to stop existing, all the cowboy-poetry about the sadness of barbed wire fences notwithstanding. More order means more economic activity. If you have any knowledge about security and cryptography, and you start planning out the security for a new kind of app, one keeps on running into difficulties, one after another. It just occurred to me the other day that these difficulties are just like the ones 3rd world businesspeople face. As far as security goes, we are living with a poverty of infrastructure. Basically, too much of the information infrastructure is broken, to the extent that we can't do diamond-hard key management. Secure medical information through the browser? People are in fear of regulation sets like HIPPA, because browsers are one of the richest sources of security holes! Private information? People say ridiculous stuff like "privacy is dead" and young women just hope the pics their ex-boyfriends posted are lost in the throngs of other evilly posted pics on the internet. It's insanity. How is this any different than someone in the 3rd world trying to build a widget delivery business, but finds that the roads are rotten, he can't get parts for his trucks, and he has to bribe people to let his trucks past, bribe people to let his warehouses be unmolested, and to get the business license in the first place? In terms of security, even the 1st world is like the 3rd world. The upshot: whoever attempts building the internet's first mature security infrastructure will have huge risks. Whoever succeeds will make billions of dollars. My startup is doing precisely this. If you understand what I am saying, you can email my username at gmail dot com. Google gets it. This is what they're trying to do with Chrome. This is how it will start. People will try to build little pockets, little pieces of infrastructure. These are the walled gardens. Some will fail. Some will succeed and even interconnect. Eventually, workable networks will securely connect the entire world.

fierarul 16y ago
You wrote a long post but could you perhaps expand it even more? Perhaps in an article? I don't see how "more order means more economic activity": if anything, I associate "more order" with more bureaucracy and higher barrier to entry for new economic agents.
- bdr 16y ago

lukeschlather 16y ago

>Not so long ago, people were outraged that Amazon could and did arbitrarily delete books from users’ Kindles; last week they clamored for Google to exercise essentially the same power. There's a significant difference between code and data. Similarly, when AOL lost to the open web, it wasn't because their code was closed, it was because their community and their content was closed. In a similar manner, iTunes needs to offer a web client if it wants to compete with Amazon, Google, and the rest in the long run. Or at least make Android/WebOS apps.

Xuzz 16y ago

(For what it's worth, the popular jailbreak app SBSettings includes a switch to disable Apple's iOS kill switch. I assume that rooted Android phones also have that possibility.)

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

KevBurnsJr 16y ago

That quip about Kindle book deletion is rather like Borders saying "We're going to sell you this book, but we reserve the right break into your house and burn it whenever we like."

bl4k 16y ago
no because you own the physical paper but only a license for the content
- endgame 16y ago
  Which is exactly the problem. See also : http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
  - bl4k 16y ago
    ye but what I am saying is that the analogy isn't 100% correct. It is more like going into your house and telling you that you aren't allowed to read the book anymore I didn't say I agree with it, that is just the way it works
- Tichy 16y ago
  What is the difference between owning some physical paper and some pyhsical bits on a memory card? In both cases I own something physical that I can use to extract a books content.

tel 16y ago

I want to reset this perennial argument into new terms for a moment. Apple has long branded itself not as a walled garden but instead as a "human focused technology design" company. From this perspective you might instead see Walled Garden as a symptom of a dominating human focus. Once you're looking at human-driven innovation and technology-driven innovation, you can start to see some major differences. Human-driven pulls money whenever it brings high technology to people's lives in a more synchronized fashion. Technology-driven pulls money when it invents something so new it literally shifts the power structure into groups of those who have it and those who don't. I find it pretty liberating that human-focused innovation is having such a renaissance right now. I don't feel so hurt if it's at a (possibly small, globally) cost to technological innovation since Apple clearly optimizes for psychology. I feel like real technological innovation can still happen as well, but a walled garden acts as a filter that separates those who just made the next poorly designed CRUD application from those who'll get bought. I'll still add that it's a little scary since I have an engineering fear of big monolithic entities like Apple and Google over well-organized, loose-integrated, and smaller guys.

trotsky 16y ago

Post facto removal doesn't meet any reasonable definition of a walled garden though. If it did, then the monthly push of the windows malicious software removal tool would make windows a walled garden. Since Windows clearly doesn't fit the definition of a walled garden, you really can't use the same functionality as a reason to call Android one. The only difference here is that it is harder to disable Android's remote push/remote kill. As is noted though it would be relatively easy for manufacturers or AOSP based projects to disable those market functionalities or provide an alternative market. Presumably if they are given a reason to want to some will.

alanstorm 16y ago

Nothing ever wins, pendulums just swing.

cageface 16y ago
Thesis -> antithesis -> synthesis.

kenjackson 16y ago

The article doesn't mention Facebook, which seems like the front-runner to the walled garden of eden. I can see Facebook doing their own browser and their own phone at some point. The already have the core app store in place and advertising platform. And of course they have the eyeballs. Facebook becomes the internet you go to when you care about knowing who you're dealing with. IMO this is bigger than Google/Chrome, iOS, or Android.

callumjones 16y ago

I wouldn't say there's a winner just yet, it's still early days in the life of smartphone OSes.

wrinklz 16y ago

POS wordpress blog covers the entire first page of text to tell me that I have JS turned off. I know that, dipshits, show me the damn blog...

tzs 16y ago
What are you talking about? With Javascript disabled the only difference I see is that the advertisement below the story is missing.

fluidcruft 16y ago

Re: Google's remote "kill switch" saving the day against DroidDream. All the kill switch did was remove the horse after the soldiers had already jumped out. But Google got super lucky and was able to also fool these particular soldiers to commit suicide. On Android phones /system is read only. To make changes there you have to get root--then you can remount /system read-write and make modifications there. DroidDream did that and installed a root shell in /system/bin/profile. To remove the infection, Google used DroidDream's own root shell. Now imagine DroidDream's /system/bin/profile didn't just accept any old command directed at it by just anybody (perhaps simply using public key cryptography). Could Google have removed from a non-rooted phone?