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Google Cuts Android Privacy Feature, Says Release Was Unintentional
An anonymous reader writes "Peter Eckersley at the EFF reports that the 'App Ops' privacy feature added to Android in 4.3 has been removed as of 4.4.2. The feature allowed users to easily manage the permission settings for installed apps. Thus, users could enjoy the features of whatever app they liked, while preventing the app from, for example, reporting location data. Eckersley writes, 'When asked for comment, Google told us that the feature had only ever been released by accident — that it was experimental, and that it could break some of the apps policed by it. We are suspicious of this explanation, and do not think that it in any way justifies removing the feature rather than improving it.1 The disappearance of App Ops is alarming news for Android users. The fact that they cannot turn off app permissions is a Stygian hole in the Android security model, and a billion people's data is being sucked through. Embarrassingly, it is also one that Apple managed to fix in iOS years ago.'"
The only reason Google "gave away" Android is because Google needed to counter the iOS threat. Remember, Google viewed the potential harm that iOS could do - it could lock Google out of the advertising business (being that Google owned the vast majority of online ad networks, and the iPhone couldn't show Flash ads that were extremely popular) in the mobile market. Google was forced to buy and release Android so they'd always have a hook. (And Google may have paid Apple to create iAds - so they could avoid DoJ scrutiny over their purchase of mobile advertising heavyweight AdMob).
Remember, Android exists because Google felt threatened that Apple could cut Google off at any point, thus depriving Google of their main source of revenue.
With this in mind, Google has already been heavy handed - the OHA version is different from the AOSP version, and you need the OHA version if you want to release a phone. And doing so meant you obliged by the OHA terms (which included the inability to load in replacements of Google Apps - so no cometing Maps or other services were allowed). Or even the thought of creating a phone that COULD run Android apps could get you kicked out of the OHA, as Acer found out when they wanted to release a phone with a mobile OS that had Android compatibility layer.
In fact, Google's been locking features out of AOSP for a while now - a lot of new features aren't in AOSP as Google has made them closed-source apps. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/
Of course, Google can do this as tney no longer need Android open-sourced anymore - it's achieved its goal of preventing Google from being locked out of iOS/mobile. In fact, the biggest threat to Google is AOSP (see Kindle), hence closed-sourcing of features.
Oh yeah, the privacy features in Android were removed because they interfered with Google's revenue - ads. Remember how I said Google owns the largest ad networks? They also own the largest mobile ad network as well. It's curious how a two-bit ad network like iAds could even be considered a "competitor" - most ads on iOS are again done by a Google-owned company rather than iAds.