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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

by hedora 3y 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 3y ago
Indeed. But then they’d be ‘sticking it’ to China too. A welcome outcome, but naive expectation.
jauntywundrkind 3y 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 3y ago
  [deleted]
- franga2000 3y 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 3y ago
It's less about sticking it to the US and more about having access to that data themselves.
ImJamal 3y ago
Doesn't MicroG accomplish that already?
imiric 3y ago
Do you really expect privacy-preserving tech to come out of China? Chinese companies are compelled by law to share the data they process with the government. Companies of the size and influence of Huawei are basically government actors. And governments, particularly authoritarian ones, want all your data. This OS project is precisely an effort for them to gain more access to user data (and partly to take control away from a US company). Why would they actively sabotage that with privacy-preserving tech?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
  Chinese companies are compelled to share data for "national security" purposes, if requested. The situation is the same in the US, however. Recall that the NSA secretly compelled US telecom networks to hand over all call records (in violation of the 4th Amendment). However, in day-to-day business operations, there are laws governing how companies can use customer data. My understanding is that data privacy laws are now stricter in China than in the US.
  - imiric 3y ago
    You're wrong, this is nothing like the legal requirements US companies must comply with. For one, Chinese companies must have a CCP member in their leadership ranks. A company the size of Huawei has hundreds of them[1]. This kind of goes without saying in an autocracy that there will be party members in all companies, but it often blurs the line of private vs. state ownership. Secondly, there are laws in place that require companies to provide direct feeds to the government of the data they process[2]. In the US, programs like PRISM were kept secret and made headlines when they were revealed, as there is still some amount of legal process that needs to happen before the government can access company data (Apple is famous for refusing, regardless if that's just PR or not), but in China this is done in the open, and all companies must comply. I find that comparing an autocratic government to others that at least have some semblance of democracy is pointless. It's a certainty that in an autocracy companies and individuals have much less control over property, including their highly valuable digital data. [1]: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2019/08/08/2003720108 https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2019/08... [2]: https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/532583-for-chinese-firms-theft-of-your-data-is-now-a-legal-requirement/ https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/532583-for-chinese...
novariation 3y ago
The main consumer of Huawei is not the privacy-obsessed western HN reader, but a third world customer that has a fairly lower expectation of privacy compared to the average American. Think of cheaper phones in China, India, Pakistan, South America, and so on. Huawei can aim for literally billions of customers without these features, just by being an all-around useful OS in every day life for the people who usually don't have phones as part of their daily toolbox yet.
DanielHB 3y ago
Microsoft considered doing this for a while. After the windows phone failed they had this whole plan to make Android devices with compatibility to Android apps by implementing their own version of Play Services backed by Bing and their own store. Last I heard it got scraped. I imagine it is a lot harder than it sounds and would still require devs to manually push their apps to the Microsoft store (which could be quite hard to convince devs to do). Funnily enough reimplementing the Play Services API would probably be 100% okay legally because of the Oracle vs Google lawsuit. If anything Google would be very okay with this to reduce the heat they are getting from anti trust regulators. As long as Microsoft never got large enough share of the market. But oh well, this is probably never gonna happen...
- kaba0 3y ago
  They did make it, but with Amazon’s backing. Subsystem for Android is still available and works surprisingly well, but thanks to Microsoft’s similarly short attention span than Google’s, it is discontinued. Though while we are at it — why is there no easy way to run android on gnu linux desktops? Hell, why is the latter not rebuilt on top of the much better android primitives? Like so many stuff is just solved in android which are laughably bad in linux desktop, like it’s nonexistent security.
  - DanielHB 3y ago
    I know about that, but that was mostly to run android apps on windows. I never tried it but I assumed most things related to Google Play Services didn't work in it. In any case I was just reminiscing about Microsoft not properly pushing "Microsoft Android" phones free of google services. > why is there no easy way to run android on gnu linux desktops? Probably because nobody bothered to do it and I imagine a lot of existing linux desktop software would have problems running in android. Like Android has its own libc and stuff. I am not knowledgeable enough though to be sure of these claims.
    - kaba0 3y ago
      I believe the answer is much more pitiful, and is a mix of not-invented-here, and “it ain’t written in c”.
lern_too_spel 3y ago
That already exists. https://github.com/microg/UnifiedNlp https://github.com/microg/UnifiedNlp Also, if you disable the Google location provider, which is opt-in on device setup, the Play services location APIs fall back to GPS.

by hedora 3y ago

freetinker 3y ago

Indeed. But then they’d be ‘sticking it’ to China too. A welcome outcome, but naive expectation.

jauntywundrkind 3y 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 3y ago
[deleted]
franga2000 3y 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 3y ago

It's less about sticking it to the US and more about having access to that data themselves.

ImJamal 3y ago

Doesn't MicroG accomplish that already?

imiric 3y ago

Do you really expect privacy-preserving tech to come out of China? Chinese companies are compelled by law to share the data they process with the government. Companies of the size and influence of Huawei are basically government actors. And governments, particularly authoritarian ones, want all your data. This OS project is precisely an effort for them to gain more access to user data (and partly to take control away from a US company). Why would they actively sabotage that with privacy-preserving tech?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
Chinese companies are compelled to share data for "national security" purposes, if requested. The situation is the same in the US, however. Recall that the NSA secretly compelled US telecom networks to hand over all call records (in violation of the 4th Amendment). However, in day-to-day business operations, there are laws governing how companies can use customer data. My understanding is that data privacy laws are now stricter in China than in the US.
- imiric 3y ago
  You're wrong, this is nothing like the legal requirements US companies must comply with. For one, Chinese companies must have a CCP member in their leadership ranks. A company the size of Huawei has hundreds of them[1]. This kind of goes without saying in an autocracy that there will be party members in all companies, but it often blurs the line of private vs. state ownership. Secondly, there are laws in place that require companies to provide direct feeds to the government of the data they process[2]. In the US, programs like PRISM were kept secret and made headlines when they were revealed, as there is still some amount of legal process that needs to happen before the government can access company data (Apple is famous for refusing, regardless if that's just PR or not), but in China this is done in the open, and all companies must comply. I find that comparing an autocratic government to others that at least have some semblance of democracy is pointless. It's a certainty that in an autocracy companies and individuals have much less control over property, including their highly valuable digital data. [1]: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2019/08/08/2003720108 https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2019/08... [2]: https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/532583-for-chinese-firms-theft-of-your-data-is-now-a-legal-requirement/ https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/532583-for-chinese...

novariation 3y ago

The main consumer of Huawei is not the privacy-obsessed western HN reader, but a third world customer that has a fairly lower expectation of privacy compared to the average American. Think of cheaper phones in China, India, Pakistan, South America, and so on. Huawei can aim for literally billions of customers without these features, just by being an all-around useful OS in every day life for the people who usually don't have phones as part of their daily toolbox yet.

DanielHB 3y ago

Microsoft considered doing this for a while. After the windows phone failed they had this whole plan to make Android devices with compatibility to Android apps by implementing their own version of Play Services backed by Bing and their own store. Last I heard it got scraped. I imagine it is a lot harder than it sounds and would still require devs to manually push their apps to the Microsoft store (which could be quite hard to convince devs to do). Funnily enough reimplementing the Play Services API would probably be 100% okay legally because of the Oracle vs Google lawsuit. If anything Google would be very okay with this to reduce the heat they are getting from anti trust regulators. As long as Microsoft never got large enough share of the market. But oh well, this is probably never gonna happen...

kaba0 3y ago
They did make it, but with Amazon’s backing. Subsystem for Android is still available and works surprisingly well, but thanks to Microsoft’s similarly short attention span than Google’s, it is discontinued. Though while we are at it — why is there no easy way to run android on gnu linux desktops? Hell, why is the latter not rebuilt on top of the much better android primitives? Like so many stuff is just solved in android which are laughably bad in linux desktop, like it’s nonexistent security.
- DanielHB 3y ago
  I know about that, but that was mostly to run android apps on windows. I never tried it but I assumed most things related to Google Play Services didn't work in it. In any case I was just reminiscing about Microsoft not properly pushing "Microsoft Android" phones free of google services. > why is there no easy way to run android on gnu linux desktops? Probably because nobody bothered to do it and I imagine a lot of existing linux desktop software would have problems running in android. Like Android has its own libc and stuff. I am not knowledgeable enough though to be sure of these claims.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    I believe the answer is much more pitiful, and is a mix of not-invented-here, and “it ain’t written in c”.

lern_too_spel 3y ago

That already exists. https://github.com/microg/UnifiedNlp https://github.com/microg/UnifiedNlp Also, if you disable the Google location provider, which is opt-in on device setup, the Play services location APIs fall back to GPS.