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Google To Require As Many As 20 of Its Apps Preinstalled On Android Devices
schwit1 writes Google is looking to exert more pressure on device OEMs that wish to continue using the Android mobile operating system. Among the new requirements for many partners: increasing the number of Google apps that must be pre-installed on the device to as many as 20, placing more Google apps on the home screen or in a prominent icon folder and making Google Search more prominent. Earlier this year, Google laid its vision to reduce fragmentation by forcing OEMs to ship new devices with more recent version of Android. Those OEMs that choose not to comply lose access to Google Mobile Services (GMS) apps like Gmail, Google Play, and YouTube.
I've waited my whole life for this...
When a company moves from innovating to abusing its market share, it's usually not a good sign.
I think that the requirement to ship recent Android versions was long time coming and is sorely needed. The other applications aren't that much of a drain, I don't think, other than taking up some of the "native" storage. Low end devices (say a $100 tablet) that often only have 1G of built-in storage will be thus strained more. Yet storage prices keep falling, so I don't see it as that much of a problem. Cost-wise, soldered-on flash is anyway cheaper than a microSD card that has to have extra packaging and a separate controller chip.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I actually find myself liking google keep. I wanted a simple thing to make quick on-the-fly lists/notes.. and it delivers.
Calendar isn't bad either.
I find hangouts kinda clunky, but I use it because it's what was there and seems to work.
They are known for pushing their in-house apps above Google's or the handset manufacturer's. They also had that deal with Microsoft that made Bing the default search engine on all their phones ("Droid" branded ones excluded, the rest of their Android phones did have it).
Is there a reason why these programs can only be "disabled," not "removed?"
They can be removed if you have unlocked the bootloader and flashed an OS image that contains su. Then you can become root, remount the OS partition read-write, and remove the apps completely.
Yeah, so they can re-enable them later when you're not looking...
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
The alternative is a phone filled with either the OEM's additions, or the carrier's crappy branded apps.
The cleanest phone you can buy is probably the Nexus 5.
Those of us who want more control will be smart buyers and purchase hardware that is easy to load with custom ROMs, then we can decide exactly how much of gapps we want.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Android devices have a read-write partition and a read-only partition. Out-of-the-box apps go in the read-only partition. There are several reasons for this, one of which is safety --- you can nuke the entire read-write partition and be sure of (a) getting a working factory reset phone and (b) that all user data has been deleted.
If an app's in the read-only partition, then it obviously can't be removed. (Although you can install updates --- the new versions go in the read-write partition and override the read-only one.) All you can do is mark it disabled.
(Of course, if you've rooted your phone, you can remount the read-only partition as read-write and tinker with it to your heart's content. I do this to move updated apps into the read-only partition to save space in the read-write partition. But that only works on rooted phones.)
I've noticed Samsung does this. Their own online store will still check for updates to disabled apps and if one is found, update and enable the app.
How is this different from Microsoft and bundling IE?
Google Intertubes Exploder 6 (TM) is tightly integrated with your Andoid operating system. Attempting to uninstall it will void your warranty, the screen will get scratched, the phone will prank call your Aunt, the battery will burst into flames, and you will get a bad case of athlete's foot.
Actually, it is crapware, at least as I see it. I have no use for social media sites and I'm not a 13 year old girl, so I'm never going to use anything named "Hangouts". If I have to have it installed on my device and I'm never going to use it then it is crapware.
I'm also never going to buy DRM infested books and audio, and if I have to have DRM in my video at least I'm going to buy it on a real piece of physical media, not as a low bit rate crippled download that can go away or might even be taken away at a whim. So the apps that deal with Google selling me stuff that I'll never ever buy are crapware to me.
But it is worse than the crapware installed on a laptop. While the manufacturers think nothing of selling a laptop with an undersized hard disk ad then filling that disk space with crapware, at least I can uninstall the crapware on a laptop and recover the space. On Android, by Google's own design, you can't simply uninstall the crap that has been pre-loaded on your tablet. Significant amounts of very limited flash memory get taken up and are not recovered by a simple uninstall. Even worse, the crap runs, taking resources, and even gets updated, taking more resources and risking an update that might introduce a problem to the tablet, all for software that I didn't want in the first place.
If Google would simply allow this stuff to be easily removed from an Android system, then I could support their requiring the vendors to include it with a new system. But until that happens, it is another case of Google being evil.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Has anyone seen the list of required apps?
Are the apps on the list required to run the phone?
Is this story a knee jerk reaction to incomplete information?
Is this story click bait so people will sign up to theinformation.com?
Because then most people would never install most of the apps, and Google needs as many people to install this stuff as possible in order to compile the most complete dossier on you that they can.
Unfortunately, rooting is not always easy for Android devices, and is said to introduce extra security issues. If Google would let us remove the crap without rooting, or provide the option in some other way, then I would consider this less evil. But as it stands I sure don't like the idea that more and more crap is being forced on the Android users. This stuff takes all kinds of resources, and updates may even introduce additional vulnerabilities, all for software that a lot of people didn't want in the first place. Sounds evil to me.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Getting less of Google crapware will be nice, but i fear that the OEMs not compliant enough to carry the google bloat, will create their own much more bloated and crappier crapware
Because the /system partition is read-only. Removing the apps will screw up OTAs and/or make them MUCH more complicated and difficult to test.
Once disabled, removing them has zero benefit. Free space in /system gains a user nothing whatsoever since, as stated before - it's read-only.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Of course there are the usual complaints of "This is my device and I only what I want." However, I feel like it's naturally in their best interest to provide a standard user experience across multiple platforms. Since much of the mobile debate is with regard to OS instead of actual device, it's just a standard PR move.
People aren't being forced to install the GMS to sell an Android phone. They are, however, being forced to install the entire GMS or none of it. There's no unbundling of just one or two apps and leaving the rest uninstalled. So if you want to sell an Android that has for example the GMail app or the Google+ app (or the Play Store app, which is the big clincher) then you have to install the others.
You couldn't be more wrong... the point made by Anonymous Coward (no, not you... the first Anonymous Coward) is valid and is informed by legal precedent set during the Microsoft anti trust case.
So, just to set the record straight... if Jonny Ive and Craig Federighi decide to screw Dan Riccio over by making onerous demands that the hardware engineering team much comply with in order to qualify to run the next version of iOS, the worst that could happen would be that Apple could have no new hardware to ship their fancy new operating system on next year. There would be howls of protest from investors, mobile network operators and customers... but Apple would be the biggest loser... not their competitors.
Microsoft was busted for abusing their monopoly power to engage in unlawful, anti-competitive practices.
For example, in Microsoft internal emails, executives discussed the fact that they understood they were hurting their own company, in order to hurt the competitor more. It's okay to try to make your product better than the other guy - that's competition. Intentionally making your product worse, in order to cause compatibility problems for the other guy, is not okay.
99.99% of the time that's self-regulating - most companies can't go around intentionally harming their own company and products or they'll go out of business. A monopoly is a special case. In 1996 Microsoft had 99% share of the desktop market. Therefore they could intentionally damage the computer industry, costing themselves $4 billion, if by doing so they'd cost Netscape $3 billion and put Netscape out of business. Any ordinary company purposely costing themselves $3 billion would be committing suicide, but for a monopolist losing $4 billion in order to make your much smaller competitor go out of business is a "smart" move. That kind of thing is why there are laws about what a monopoly power can do and not do.
Android has 51% of the market. They aren't a monopoly. If Google purposely creates a problem that makes Android worse, in order to also cause a problem for iOS, Microsoft would be jumping for joy. Microsoft only has 3.5% of the market, but they also have $380 billion to spend taking advantage of anything stupid Google might do.
So Google isn't a monopoly, and their actions are competitive, not anti-competitive (in the legal sense).
Do you also wonder about the difference between what Hans Rieser did and what Miley Cyrus did at the MTV awards?
Android and the MS case aren't even comparable. It's like comparing oranges to trucks.
Apple can make demands on the phone companies, and Apple can make changes to the carriers don't move any device. This would hurt more then just Apple.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on