Make-Believe: Too late for Google to make Android an operating system focused on privacy

The figured terrain in which Android landed last week is still hot, and yet Google is already promising that its upcoming operating system revision will solve so many privacy issues that we will forget about its social media blunder and Other recent controversies threatening the very notion of personal information.

Yes, of course, that's not literally what he said, but just reading the privacy part of the Android Q Beta 1 ad is an exercise to keep your face impbadive. I mean, Google probably looks and it's better not to determine who exactly finds his amusing misfortunes.

But what to do when a business whose business model is synonymous with the erosion of digital privacy worldwide commits itself to defend its most basic principles. Note that this does not even mean that Google is wrong to sell invasive advertising for money, the ethical concerns related to such activity have only become a thing recently because the rare individual who raised them several years ago was earlier qualified as a paranoid conspiracy theorist. a voice that deserves to be heard.

Talking about tougher federal privacy laws has also been an intermittent affair for more than five years now, more than ever before. Yet, as Google began to lose high-ranking friends after the 2016 presidential election that had probably shocked even the alien powers identified by the Mueller report and culminated in its outcome, it also began to be involved in clashes with the highest officials of the DNC, ideologically close.

Yes, I am away from the subject, but not much; The fact is that Google currently lacks political goodwill and that Android Q comes at a time when it is more likely than ever to start feeling the wrath of a legislature concerned with privacy. In fact, no one is indifferent to the amount of power he is yielding now, so the irony of his facade of unity and amicable discourse lies in the fact that both sides of the country's political spectrum, well that they are farther apart than ever, standing at a frightening point of polarization in American history, could in fact forget their many differences for a short time in order to remain united – against Google.

This is not to say that the GOP and DNC priorities for potential privacy legislation are the same, but they are important enough for both parties to be willing to sit together and negotiate, what is more than what can be said about … all that is politically relevant lately, really.

Because of this, Google is no longer trying to turn Android into a confidential operating system, but to rename it. That's why for example Android Q is set up to randomize your default MAC address, which is intended to prevent tracking efforts initiated by public Wi-Fi service providers such as shopping malls, restaurant chains or, I do not know, Google itself.

It does not matter that Google is always avoiding a scandal caused by the fact that it does not enforce the limits imposed on digital confidentiality by the users. No, we are now supposed to believe that he will respect those that he imposes on himself.

In fact, the Alphabet affiliate even proposed a brand new dimension to Android location permissions, to allow users more granular control over this sensitive data – while legitimizing the very gray area in which it violated the default values users. What is it? A little bit of innocent kids looming and you are already the bad guy? Times are changing, especially for the digital giants who have built their empires from countless pools of data collected from users of their "free" services over the years.

It's only now, more than ten years after the beginnings of Android, that Google is trying to limit the ability of third-party applications to monitor their communications even when they have no activity at all. Proximity to this information, simply We risked asking for critical permissions and at a convenient time, and we managed to trick their users into agreeing to them. Of course, Google is always free to sift through this data anytime, just be confident that it will not abuse that ability, but will check its stellar record with consumer information.

Certainly, no business, no matter what industry it is, can get close to Google's size without making countless mistakes. Yet this is precisely the problem: one should never allow a single company to obtain such power. Google is above his head, Android was designed from the ground up with advertising in mind, and no amount of improvements and wellness stories will change that.

Of course, Google will announce some sort of streaming game console in a few hours and everyone will forget about it for a while, but the fact remains that Android is now presented as something that it can not simply not be, a purpose-built OS designed to ensure the privacy of its users. The only consolation of Google is that it does not have to pretend to put Facebook in a similar situation, but that does not change the fact that Android Q marks the beginning of the end of the highly flexible reign of the company on user data and that mbadive changes are undoubtedly underway. l & # 39; horizon.