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Google Scans 6B Apps, 400M Devices Each Day; Says 30% of Android Devices Don't Get Regular Patches (googleblog.com)
Reader Trailrunner7 writes: As part of the enhancements to Android security, Google scans more than 6 billion installed applications per day on users' devices. The company also scans more than 400 million devices each day, it announced on Tuesday. Google last year also began releasing monthly security updates for devices running modern versions of Android, which includes devices on version 4.4.4 (KitKat) and later. "70.8% of all active Android devices are on a version that we support with patches," the Android report says. However, that still leaves hundreds of millions of Android devices without regular updates. There were roughly 1.4 billion Android devices active in September, according to Google, so that would leave about 420 million Android devices without patches. In the Android ecosystem, carriers are also responsible for pushing security patches to users, so while Google pushes security updates each month, not all carriers and device manufacturers release them to all users regularly.In its report, Google also says that fewer than 0.15% of devices, that only get apps from Google Play, had potentially harmful apps installed on them.
Well, Google, you're in the best position to make that happen. Allow your update process to update stuff like the libraries which had the stagefright problem to get updated by yourselves and not require the manufacturers to do it, because you know better than we do how bad they are at it. And have a word with Samsung, who tell you they'll provide major updates to Android for 18 months and then simply refuse to to it.
Or is this just a ploy to get people to buy from your increasingly bad value for money Nexus range?
>> Google Says 30% of Android Devices Don't Get Regular Patches
>> In the Android ecosystem, carriers are also responsible for pushing security patches to users, so while Google pushes security updates each month, not all carriers and device manufacturers release them to all users regularly.
It sounds like the ball's in Google's court. "Want to be an 'Android' vendor? You agree to keep your devices updated with our security patches."
Thirty percent. Riiiiiiiiiiight.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, it wouldn't be so bad if you just had to get updates from Google and the manufacturer, but when you have to suffer the carriers wanting to put their crap into the OS as well - then you are really in trouble as they don't care a jot about 'old' devices, but would much rather sell you something new that spend money providing updates for what they have sold previously.