Do you expect Apple to listen to your conversations just because you use a mac and it has a microphone? Do you expect Toyota to track you everywhere you go because your car came with a GPS system?
Building the system, let alone just making the software, doesn't give you the rights to all the data it produces after you sell it.
I don't know why that comment was being voted down, but it is a correct and important point. Consumers' idea of product ownership is more aligned with that of cars and coffee machines.
Most consumers don't realise how little of their phone is purchased and how much of it is licensed, rented or reliant on corporate existence. Imagine if Apple and Google magically disappeared from the universe—the value and utility of your phone will plummet.
> Consumers' idea of product ownership is more aligned with that of cars and coffee machines.
Well in germany there is a good sentence about that.
'Ignorance of the law is no excuse'. So basically no matter what you know of anything you won't be guarded by laziness (at least if you are under normal conditions of course).
What is the difference? Both the hardware and the software are covered by hundreds of patents, copyright protections, license agreements, end user agreements, etc.
The question here is what basic privacies can someone expect when they purchase a phone, and how transparent do companies need to be about what information they are collecting.
The difference is the essence of ownership. Google/Apple can't physically take away my phone, but they could declare a violation of the terms of service and terminate the software license agreement.
One would think so. It is, after all, an operating system created by the largest advertising company that has ever existed, and they are not giving it away for altruistic reasons.
Not certain why the downvotes; apart from community ROMs and Amazon's Android devices, Samsung has been positioning itself for some time to not be completely reliant on Google for it's phone business - they have an App Store of their own and their own duplicate functionality of many of Google's core services for Android. I wouldn't be surprised if they de-coupled from Google entirely at some point (yes, they'd need to convince developers over to their app store, but they're playing the long game)
True Samsung's not any better, but diversity is a good thing; if they have an alternative in place then they could much more easily provide competition with Google in this space (after all, Samsung sells hardware and doesn't really need to harvest your data)
Do you expect Apple to listen to your conversations just because you use a mac and it has a microphone? Do you expect Toyota to track you everywhere you go because your car came with a GPS system?
Building the system, let alone just making the software, doesn't give you the rights to all the data it produces after you sell it.