{"id":1157,"date":"2010-09-17T13:19:11","date_gmt":"2010-09-17T21:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=1157"},"modified":"2010-09-17T13:40:58","modified_gmt":"2010-09-17T21:40:58","slug":"android-oems-will-need-to-use-google-location-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/?p=1157","title":{"rendered":"Android OEMs will need to use Google Location Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Daring Fireball<\/a>, John Gruber tells us about Google's approach to controlling content on Android, quoting a brief by Skyhook Wireless in the \u201ccomplaint and jury demand\u201d<\/a> they filed against Google recently.<\/p>\n

John discusses a couple of aspects of\u00a0the filing, which\u00a0he describes as\u00a0“not long, and… written in pretty straightforward plain language, regarding Google\u2019s control over which devices have access to the Android Market”.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In particular he\u00a0calls our attention to the way Google is tying Android to\u00a0it's location service<\/em> – the one made famous during the StreetView WiFi\u00a0scandal:<\/p>\n

23. On information and belief, Google has notified OEMs that they will need to use Google Location Service, either as a condition of the Android OS-OEM contract or as a condition of the Google Apps contract between Google and each OEM. Though Google claims the Android OS is open source, by requiring OEMs to use Google Location Service, an application that is inextricably bundled with the OS level framework, Google is effectively creating a closed system with respect to location positioning. Google\u2019s manipulation suggests that the true purpose of Android is, or has become, to ensure that \u201cno industry player can restrict or control the innovations of any other\u201d, unless it is Google.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He\u00a0bookends this\u00a0with an ironic quote from Vic Gundotra, Google's Vice-President for Engineering:<\/p>\n

If you believe in openness, if you believe in choice, if you believe in innovation from everyone, then welcome to Android.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If Google is actually forcing\u00a0OEMs to hook their users into its world-wide location database it adds one more sinister note to the dark architecture\u00a0of StreetView location services.<\/p>\n

[Thanks to Cameron Westland<\/a> for the heads up]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Could the slogan of “openness and choice” use a bit of tuning?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[81,11,77],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}