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by elorant 3498 days ago
Jailbreak a phone and you can surely do whatever you want on it. Other than that it's not Google's fault how a manufacturer customizes the software.
1 comments

If it is an Android phone with Google Play store then it is definitely Google's fault. Maybe Google should stop manufacturers from installing Android on their phones when they are doing things like this.

You want me to tell you why Google won't do anything, because Google doesn't give a crap about what manufacturers do as long as they keep installing Android on as many phones as possible and in return they get more advertising dollars.

The phone has Google Services including Play Store (which I never used because it needs a Google Account, so I download software either from F-droid or from apkpure). But I don't know if it is licensed. It is noname chinese manufacturer that probably doesn't care much about american copyright (and GPL too because I could not find any links to linux kernel source code at their website).

> You want me to tell you why Google won't do anything, because Google doesn't give a crap about what manufacturers do as long as they keep installing Android on as many phones as possible

Google could allow controlling firewall on Android (and getting root access). The only reason they don't do it is because then users will be able to block tracking and advertisement.

> If it is an Android phone with Google Play store then it is definitely Google's fault. Maybe Google should stop manufacturers from installing Android on their phones when they are doing things like this.

If it's GMS Certified, sure.

It's possible (common even) for some shady OEMs to install Google Play Store, despite not being GMS certified. Asking them to prevent that is a lot like demanding a stop to all software piracy.

because Google doesn't give a crap about what manufacturers do as long as they keep installing Android on as many phones as possible and in return they get more advertising dollars.

And why exactly is that bad?

Because Google has no incentive to fix the issue.
It's not their issue to fix.

Do you demand Microsoft take action because say Lenovo installs superfish?

You make Lenovo fix it instead of a tangentially related company like Microsoft.

Same thing here. It's not a Google issue.

Microsoft has to address the amount of crapware vendors ship and the permissions they have and deffinitely plays some games of chicken with them to try to keep windows market share.

While it makes sense to hit the vendors directly to the extent possible, it also costs these platforms trust when most of the ways users end up with them have them compromised from day one. I.e. do I give relatives a list of vendors I think might be safe to use without a complete wipe and fresh install? For windows that is impossible.

Unlike Google (that "is not evil") Microsoft allows user to gain administrator access and install firewall on Windows.