6 ms·

Good in theory but Google's Android apps and Google forbidding Indian telcom companies and Chinese smartphone manufactures from installing adwarecrap has made t

Good in theory but Google's Android apps and Google forbidding Indian telcom companies and Chinese smartphone manufactures from installing adwarecrap has made the ultra-cheap smartphone experience somewhat tolerable for hundreds of millions of people. It's all going to be insufferable adware hell from now on.

acchow 4y ago
> It's all going to be insufferable adware hell from now on. Didn't American telecom companies try this? And then the customers eventually found it all insufferable, so the practice was canned?
- summerlight 4y ago
  That's mostly because of iOS where Apple has a complete control over. If the half of the market cannot play with those garbage, it is much harder to do that for the rest as well thanks to competition. But AFAIK, iOS has a pretty minimal presence in India so it's not going to be the same situation.
lenkite 4y ago
Open access will also enable OSS apps. Having alternatives would be terrific.
2Gkashmiri 4y ago
i don't understand what you are trying to say?
- CobrastanJorji 4y ago
  I read it as "Google having control was bad, but Google had been using that control to stop very bad things, so in practical terms this is actually bad news."
  - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
    nah.... sure we will have ad filed stores and all that bs but that is currently happening on xiaomi and realme phones anyways.... they have OS level ads and people are fine with it.... i am interested in having F-droid as a respectable store that has some more polish, aurora-store type features would be nice things to have. and having ability to "delete system apps" that is only possible on stock android or in my case moto phones only.... i don't have google crap installed and untill now, xiaomi/realme/oppo and others couldn't do that even if they wanted. now they can..... think of it this way. W10, w11 has a lot of nonsense but for technically inclined, there is the debloater so anyone who is interested can do that and that should happen here also
tatpacc 4y ago
other comment mentioning that "Ambani’s Reliance co will launch search next month." is not realistic. I mean even Bing is not able to capture significant market share of Google after all these years. > Google forbidding Indian telcom companies and Chinese smartphone manufactures from installing adwarecrap has made the ultra-cheap smartphone experience somewhat tolerable for hundreds of millions of people. however, this comment is also related to Ambani’s Jio (Subsidiary of Reliance) are planning to launch Android devices. And mind it, Jio is one of the largest telecom provider in India with the blessing of ruling party. Jio also have suits of all kind of applications like chat, payment, audio streaming like Spotify, and what not, etc. which is less of utility app and can be use as surveillance system for the government in the future. India is heading towards government system like deadly mix of Russia in terms of democracy and China in terms of surveillance system (look at the recent telecom act amendment proposed by government in last month. Basically it can force any VoIP services such as WhatsApp to verify user identity.) Current government was not approving WhatsApp license for UPI for years until after WhatsApp decided to invest in Jio [https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/24/india-approves-facebooks-5-7-billion-deal-with-reliance-jio-platforms/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/24/india-approves-facebooks-5...] At that time few peoples were discussing that this investment is nothing but to bribe government and/or Jio to get UPI license. Now WhatsApp got that permission [https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/13/whatsapp-permitted-to-extend-payments-service-to-100-million-users-in-india/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/13/whatsapp-permitted-to-exte...]
- sremani 4y ago
  Ah! the whole theory that Reliance is a BJP's poodle. Go back and look 1986 Cricket World Cup and what is it named.. and .. you got it right, Reliance Cup. The Ambanis are no one's poodles all Indian Politicians are their poodles. The monumental growth of Reliance from a small textile company to a petro-chemical behemoth to a huge conglomerate happened under the rule of Indian National Congress.
  - saimiam 4y ago
    *1987…but other than that, spot on
  - 4y ago
sirpunch 4y ago
I hope people don't make the assumption that anything that's not coming from Google is harmful and a potential adware/malware. People who support Apple's app store monopoly also use the same logic. Maybe the Indian government needs to push separate bills prohibiting manufactures from packaging crapware. But this is a step in the right direction IMO.
- cafed00d 4y ago
  > Maybe the Indian government needs to push separate bills prohibiting manufactures from packaging crapware One person's crapware is another person's batteries-included-ware. We wouldn't want to ban Sony MP3 players from including an app that plays music, right? Similar to how we wouldn't want iPods to be banned from coming with an in-built Apple Music.app client[1] Google's bundled-in variant of an internet browser _may_ be as harmful as Safari on iOS or, quite formidably[2], Internet Explorer on Windows. But unless governments can unambiguously discern whether Chrome is adware/crapware or batteries-included-software we'd not get much use out of regulation. [1] Please don't flame on me with "iPods don't have Apple Music". What I meant to say is that the on-device application software that ran on iPods is _identical_ to that running on macOS, iPhone etc. It's pretty much the exact same music player code. [2] IE bundling into Windows is literally what got Microsoft branded as anti-competitive by the Justice Dept. in the late 90s / early 2000s
  - neilpa 4y ago
    > We wouldn't want to ban Sony MP3 players from including an app that plays music, right? Maybe? There was that time Sony decided to install a rootkit when you played a CD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
  - nmridul 4y ago
    If Apple ipod is market leader in music player then the device owner should be able to uninstall the "Apple music" and install any 3rd party developed music player on it, this should be OK.
  - 4y ago
nmridul 4y ago
Except Motorola (now owned by Lenovo and claims closest to default Android) most of the Chinese phones still come with their own bloatware. Xiaomi has many default apps including their own Messaging, file manager, dialer. These come with their own user agreement and privacy policy. Some of these apps are good to have while others are just bloat.
- anshumankmr 4y ago
  Samsung too has a tonne of bloatware crap. I bought a phone for 30K (which is a decent amount for a phone IMO) and it was loaded with absolute crap I don't use and can't even remove with adb.
- smaudet 4y ago
  Motorola is chinese??
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    I believe Lenovo is, but it's been a while since I've actually looked it up.
gauddasa 4y ago
But I've been always disabling (using Android Debug Bridge) native Google apps (Gmail, Youtube ...) and using alternatives from F-Droid including apps for phone call and messaging. In fact, I have avoided signing into Play Store on all androids I have ever used so far.
danuker 4y ago
> adwarecrap You mean Google bundling their apps with spyware, then sending me ads based on the info gathered is not adwarecrap?
- sophacles 4y ago
  Its adware. It's also better than a lot of apps that fall into the crap category. For instance, maps will show me maps that are farily accurate. Many of the bundled apps i would get in the past - verizon maps or whatever - weren't actually able to do their purported job, just display ads until crash.
  - danuker 4y ago
    In the past few years, the Google experience has been devolving. GMail loads a ton of JS, app sizes are larger and apps are slower, and Maps won't even show me the name of the town I'm currently in, while navigating (and the UI is terrible). If it weren't for traffic data and good geocoding, I'd be using OsmAnd all the time (the overall UX is about the same).
joshxyz 4y ago
having tried android such as samsung vivo huawei xiaomi - everything just sucks. switched to apple and it is better, doesnt prompt too much for tracking.
pabs3 4y ago
> It's all going to be insufferable adware hell from now on. The same sorts of rules should prevent those companies from blocking alternative operating systems (including plain AOSP) from supporting the phones of those insufferable adware smartphone manufacturer companies.

acchow 4y ago

> It's all going to be insufferable adware hell from now on. Didn't American telecom companies try this? And then the customers eventually found it all insufferable, so the practice was canned?

summerlight 4y ago
That's mostly because of iOS where Apple has a complete control over. If the half of the market cannot play with those garbage, it is much harder to do that for the rest as well thanks to competition. But AFAIK, iOS has a pretty minimal presence in India so it's not going to be the same situation.

lenkite 4y ago

Open access will also enable OSS apps. Having alternatives would be terrific.

2Gkashmiri 4y ago

i don't understand what you are trying to say?

CobrastanJorji 4y ago
I read it as "Google having control was bad, but Google had been using that control to stop very bad things, so in practical terms this is actually bad news."
- 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  nah.... sure we will have ad filed stores and all that bs but that is currently happening on xiaomi and realme phones anyways.... they have OS level ads and people are fine with it.... i am interested in having F-droid as a respectable store that has some more polish, aurora-store type features would be nice things to have. and having ability to "delete system apps" that is only possible on stock android or in my case moto phones only.... i don't have google crap installed and untill now, xiaomi/realme/oppo and others couldn't do that even if they wanted. now they can..... think of it this way. W10, w11 has a lot of nonsense but for technically inclined, there is the debloater so anyone who is interested can do that and that should happen here also

tatpacc 4y ago

other comment mentioning that "Ambani’s Reliance co will launch search next month." is not realistic. I mean even Bing is not able to capture significant market share of Google after all these years. > Google forbidding Indian telcom companies and Chinese smartphone manufactures from installing adwarecrap has made the ultra-cheap smartphone experience somewhat tolerable for hundreds of millions of people. however, this comment is also related to Ambani’s Jio (Subsidiary of Reliance) are planning to launch Android devices. And mind it, Jio is one of the largest telecom provider in India with the blessing of ruling party. Jio also have suits of all kind of applications like chat, payment, audio streaming like Spotify, and what not, etc. which is less of utility app and can be use as surveillance system for the government in the future. India is heading towards government system like deadly mix of Russia in terms of democracy and China in terms of surveillance system (look at the recent telecom act amendment proposed by government in last month. Basically it can force any VoIP services such as WhatsApp to verify user identity.) Current government was not approving WhatsApp license for UPI for years until after WhatsApp decided to invest in Jio [https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/24/india-approves-facebooks-5-7-billion-deal-with-reliance-jio-platforms/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/24/india-approves-facebooks-5...] At that time few peoples were discussing that this investment is nothing but to bribe government and/or Jio to get UPI license. Now WhatsApp got that permission [https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/13/whatsapp-permitted-to-extend-payments-service-to-100-million-users-in-india/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/13/whatsapp-permitted-to-exte...]

sremani 4y ago
Ah! the whole theory that Reliance is a BJP's poodle. Go back and look 1986 Cricket World Cup and what is it named.. and .. you got it right, Reliance Cup. The Ambanis are no one's poodles all Indian Politicians are their poodles. The monumental growth of Reliance from a small textile company to a petro-chemical behemoth to a huge conglomerate happened under the rule of Indian National Congress.
- saimiam 4y ago
  *1987…but other than that, spot on
- 4y ago

sirpunch 4y ago

I hope people don't make the assumption that anything that's not coming from Google is harmful and a potential adware/malware. People who support Apple's app store monopoly also use the same logic. Maybe the Indian government needs to push separate bills prohibiting manufactures from packaging crapware. But this is a step in the right direction IMO.

cafed00d 4y ago
> Maybe the Indian government needs to push separate bills prohibiting manufactures from packaging crapware One person's crapware is another person's batteries-included-ware. We wouldn't want to ban Sony MP3 players from including an app that plays music, right? Similar to how we wouldn't want iPods to be banned from coming with an in-built Apple Music.app client[1] Google's bundled-in variant of an internet browser _may_ be as harmful as Safari on iOS or, quite formidably[2], Internet Explorer on Windows. But unless governments can unambiguously discern whether Chrome is adware/crapware or batteries-included-software we'd not get much use out of regulation. [1] Please don't flame on me with "iPods don't have Apple Music". What I meant to say is that the on-device application software that ran on iPods is _identical_ to that running on macOS, iPhone etc. It's pretty much the exact same music player code. [2] IE bundling into Windows is literally what got Microsoft branded as anti-competitive by the Justice Dept. in the late 90s / early 2000s
- neilpa 4y ago
  > We wouldn't want to ban Sony MP3 players from including an app that plays music, right? Maybe? There was that time Sony decided to install a rootkit when you played a CD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
- nmridul 4y ago
  If Apple ipod is market leader in music player then the device owner should be able to uninstall the "Apple music" and install any 3rd party developed music player on it, this should be OK.
- 4y ago

nmridul 4y ago

Except Motorola (now owned by Lenovo and claims closest to default Android) most of the Chinese phones still come with their own bloatware. Xiaomi has many default apps including their own Messaging, file manager, dialer. These come with their own user agreement and privacy policy. Some of these apps are good to have while others are just bloat.

anshumankmr 4y ago
Samsung too has a tonne of bloatware crap. I bought a phone for 30K (which is a decent amount for a phone IMO) and it was loaded with absolute crap I don't use and can't even remove with adb.
smaudet 4y ago
Motorola is chinese??
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  I believe Lenovo is, but it's been a while since I've actually looked it up.

gauddasa 4y ago

But I've been always disabling (using Android Debug Bridge) native Google apps (Gmail, Youtube ...) and using alternatives from F-Droid including apps for phone call and messaging. In fact, I have avoided signing into Play Store on all androids I have ever used so far.

danuker 4y ago

> adwarecrap You mean Google bundling their apps with spyware, then sending me ads based on the info gathered is not adwarecrap?

sophacles 4y ago
Its adware. It's also better than a lot of apps that fall into the crap category. For instance, maps will show me maps that are farily accurate. Many of the bundled apps i would get in the past - verizon maps or whatever - weren't actually able to do their purported job, just display ads until crash.
- danuker 4y ago
  In the past few years, the Google experience has been devolving. GMail loads a ton of JS, app sizes are larger and apps are slower, and Maps won't even show me the name of the town I'm currently in, while navigating (and the UI is terrible). If it weren't for traffic data and good geocoding, I'd be using OsmAnd all the time (the overall UX is about the same).

joshxyz 4y ago

having tried android such as samsung vivo huawei xiaomi - everything just sucks. switched to apple and it is better, doesnt prompt too much for tracking.

pabs3 4y ago

> It's all going to be insufferable adware hell from now on. The same sorts of rules should prevent those companies from blocking alternative operating systems (including plain AOSP) from supporting the phones of those insufferable adware smartphone manufacturer companies.