5 ms·

Huawei breaks free from Google ecosystem with homegrown HarmonyOS

33 points by ilamont 2y ago

methuselah_in 2y ago
[flagged]
- caseyy 2y ago
  > Without Google and American source code what the hell huawei can do? If there no aosp then huawei is just nothing. They have to make java phones. Taking foundation from aosp do anything over doesn't break free lol Huawei are building Harmony OS Next, which is independent from and incompatible with Android. They are not using AOSP core, they are building their own kernel. Huawei is also obviously not nothing in China. They are a very large telecom and tech company that builds many more types of hardware and software than we've seen in the West. For example, their Super Device tech doesn't have alternatives in the popular ecosystems. They are also in automotive, photovoltaics, fiber optics, and a few other niches. Nothing without AOSP? lol Besides, what's the point about open source that you are trying to make? Open source helps tech companies, developers, tinkerers, and so on, yes. This is specifically what it is made to do. They are free to use AOSP and AOSP has contributors far beyond just Americans. It could also be said that American companies benefit from Chinese open source code. Or are you trying to say that one is worthy of the other but not vice versa? You've managed to put quite a lot of misrepresentation in a very short message.
  - ksynwa 2y ago
    > Huawei is also obviously not nothing in China. The article talks about this too when it says that Huawei can potentially be the highest selling phone brand at the end of the year. A big reason why this is possible is because China has its own ecosystem of online services and apps. Were they reliant on Meta, Amazon like (for example) India is today it would be much more tricky to pull off. Many people don't realise this but this part of the reason why the Great Firewall exists. It is a protectionist measure against foreign digital companies which allowed their own indigenous technical sector to develop. Combine this with the fact that the Communist Party has cells in every important Chinese company, it becomes much easier to coordinate a nationwide campaign to develop applications for critical services on a completely new OS. As American sanctions prevented Huawei from properly using Android as the article says, it is pretty easy to give it a national security spin and devote coordinate effort to this undertaking. In short, it is much more imaginable for a country like China to develop a new mobile OS if they wanted to. The only thing they need are skilled engineers. On the other hand I cannot fathom a mainstream alternative to iOS or Android appearing in the US and other such countries.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      >It is a protectionist measure against foreign digital companies which allowed their own indigenous technical sector to develop. Often I wonder what a paralel universe would have looked like where the EU had the same firewall except not for government censorship but for protectionism against US big-tech, allowing local companies to develop alternatives to critical US products and services(Windows, Office, Google, AWS, etc), instead of using the US ones by default and calling it quits.
ohmyiv 2y ago
https://archive.is/20240508014314/https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/Huawei-breaks-free-from-Google-ecosystem-with-homegrown-OS https://archive.is/20240508014314/https://asia.nikkei.com/Bu...
hedora 2y ago
If they really wanted to stick it to Google and the US State Dept, they’d fund a privacy-preserving open source replacement for google play services. E.g., why do I have to constantly send my location to google in the background just to access my lat/long in apps that use google libraries?
- freetinker 2y ago
  Indeed. But then they’d be ‘sticking it’ to China too. A welcome outcome, but naive expectation.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  Afaict you don't send your location data to Google. You just made that up? Do you have a reference? (In general, I think it'd be a far bolder cultural victory to go create their own new thing, rather than focusing on a modest punking of the appstore. I also think that's a much harder task! They do seem to have some interesting innovative distributed systems ideas that could become a powerful next level experience, called DSoftBus. But what an undertaking!)
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - franga2000 2y ago
    Using network location effectively means streaming your location to Google any time any app is using the geolocation APIs. The way it gets a location so quickly and power-efficiently is by scanning for nearby wifi networks and asking Google's servers where it could be. When you have a splic location lock, it sends its location along with nearby wifi networks to Google so they can update their database.
- drekipus 2y ago
  It's less about sticking it to the US and more about having access to that data themselves.
- ImJamal 2y ago
pxue 2y ago
Tug of war with tencent. Hope they figure it out like Apple did with Google.
hurutparittya 2y ago
It is crucial that we ban the use of remote attestation on consumer devices through regulation if we ever want to have any sort of freedom.
- hulitu 2y ago
  It is too late.

33 points by ilamont 2y ago

methuselah_in 2y ago

[flagged]

caseyy 2y ago
> Without Google and American source code what the hell huawei can do? If there no aosp then huawei is just nothing. They have to make java phones. Taking foundation from aosp do anything over doesn't break free lol Huawei are building Harmony OS Next, which is independent from and incompatible with Android. They are not using AOSP core, they are building their own kernel. Huawei is also obviously not nothing in China. They are a very large telecom and tech company that builds many more types of hardware and software than we've seen in the West. For example, their Super Device tech doesn't have alternatives in the popular ecosystems. They are also in automotive, photovoltaics, fiber optics, and a few other niches. Nothing without AOSP? lol Besides, what's the point about open source that you are trying to make? Open source helps tech companies, developers, tinkerers, and so on, yes. This is specifically what it is made to do. They are free to use AOSP and AOSP has contributors far beyond just Americans. It could also be said that American companies benefit from Chinese open source code. Or are you trying to say that one is worthy of the other but not vice versa? You've managed to put quite a lot of misrepresentation in a very short message.
- ksynwa 2y ago
  > Huawei is also obviously not nothing in China. The article talks about this too when it says that Huawei can potentially be the highest selling phone brand at the end of the year. A big reason why this is possible is because China has its own ecosystem of online services and apps. Were they reliant on Meta, Amazon like (for example) India is today it would be much more tricky to pull off. Many people don't realise this but this part of the reason why the Great Firewall exists. It is a protectionist measure against foreign digital companies which allowed their own indigenous technical sector to develop. Combine this with the fact that the Communist Party has cells in every important Chinese company, it becomes much easier to coordinate a nationwide campaign to develop applications for critical services on a completely new OS. As American sanctions prevented Huawei from properly using Android as the article says, it is pretty easy to give it a national security spin and devote coordinate effort to this undertaking. In short, it is much more imaginable for a country like China to develop a new mobile OS if they wanted to. The only thing they need are skilled engineers. On the other hand I cannot fathom a mainstream alternative to iOS or Android appearing in the US and other such countries.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    >It is a protectionist measure against foreign digital companies which allowed their own indigenous technical sector to develop. Often I wonder what a paralel universe would have looked like where the EU had the same firewall except not for government censorship but for protectionism against US big-tech, allowing local companies to develop alternatives to critical US products and services(Windows, Office, Google, AWS, etc), instead of using the US ones by default and calling it quits.

ohmyiv 2y ago

https://archive.is/20240508014314/https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/Huawei-breaks-free-from-Google-ecosystem-with-homegrown-OS https://archive.is/20240508014314/https://asia.nikkei.com/Bu...

hedora 2y ago

If they really wanted to stick it to Google and the US State Dept, they’d fund a privacy-preserving open source replacement for google play services. E.g., why do I have to constantly send my location to google in the background just to access my lat/long in apps that use google libraries?

freetinker 2y ago
Indeed. But then they’d be ‘sticking it’ to China too. A welcome outcome, but naive expectation.
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
Afaict you don't send your location data to Google. You just made that up? Do you have a reference? (In general, I think it'd be a far bolder cultural victory to go create their own new thing, rather than focusing on a modest punking of the appstore. I also think that's a much harder task! They do seem to have some interesting innovative distributed systems ideas that could become a powerful next level experience, called DSoftBus. But what an undertaking!)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- franga2000 2y ago
  Using network location effectively means streaming your location to Google any time any app is using the geolocation APIs. The way it gets a location so quickly and power-efficiently is by scanning for nearby wifi networks and asking Google's servers where it could be. When you have a splic location lock, it sends its location along with nearby wifi networks to Google so they can update their database.
drekipus 2y ago
It's less about sticking it to the US and more about having access to that data themselves.
ImJamal 2y ago

pxue 2y ago

Tug of war with tencent. Hope they figure it out like Apple did with Google.

hurutparittya 2y ago

It is crucial that we ban the use of remote attestation on consumer devices through regulation if we ever want to have any sort of freedom.

hulitu 2y ago
It is too late.