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> Google has been steadily moving things into play services though, which is not open. This is a good thing, they've been de-googling the base OS and making it
by px43 6y ago
> Google has been steadily moving things into play services though, which is not open.
This is a good thing, they've been de-googling the base OS and making it as stripped down and bare-bones as possible.
This is a huge win for security, privacy, and freedom in general, and exactly what they should be doing. Android should be a small, secure Linux based operating system with an API that makes it easy to build services on top of it. The Google ecosystem should be completely decoupled from the OS.
- eloff 6y agoFair enough, but android without play services is also barely usable and most apps will not run. It's also an effective way of building the walls around the garden.
- yellowapple 6y agoI'm relatively ambivalent to a walled garden if and only if there's a (reliable) way to opt out of it. In Android's case, it's not only quite possible to opt out of Google's garden, but arguably rather commonplace (Amazon's "Fire" devices, most custom ROMs by default, etc.). In iOS' case, it's outright impossible.
- waynecrescent 6y agoOpting out will be harder and harder because technologies like SafetyNet will make most apps unusable on non google approved devices.
- bsaul 6y agowhich makes me wonder why amazon or facebook haven't started leading an open-source alternative to google play services. It's such an easy way to run the mobile race compared to start ing from scratch.
- folmar 6y agoAndroid with google services replacement MicroG GmsCore runs most apps without hassles.
- folmar 6y agoMy experience is quite the opposite: they are hardcoding more things to be hard to replace - you can only have /system apps not affected by forced battery saving limits, the new file-based encryption is moot on unlocked bootloader etc.