Microsoft’s Cortana Gets Baked into Cyanogen’s Forked Version of Android | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft’s Cortana Gets Baked into Cyanogen’s Forked Version of Android

techcrunch.com

109 pointsdigital_ins52 comments

To clarify a lot of the misinformation in the comments:

* To my knowledge, Microsoft doesn't own Cyanogen.

* The genesis of this is old (public) news: https://cyngn.com/press/cyanogen-announces-strategic-partner...

* Cyanogen OS != Cyanogenmod. Cyanogen OS is a commercial OS. Cyanogenmod is an open source, community-driven OS.

Thank you for that clarification. The article didn't explain the difference between CyanogenOS and CyanogenMod, after reading it I thought they were talking about the latter.

Hang on, wasn't the whole point of Cyanogen about removing bloatware in standard Android distributions and adding more privacy measures?

How can adding a large app that sends data to Microsoft help with bloatware or security..? I've used Cyanogen a little before on certain Android devices that had tons of built in bloat and themes to slim it down a bit. I definitely wouldn't want to swap one type of bloat for another.

Time to use a different slim rom from XDA I guess?

IIRC this only affects Cyanogen OS and not CyanogenMod.

http://www.androidcentral.com/difference-between-cyanogen-os...

So, you should be able to avoid Cortana by using CyanogenMod instead.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think cyanogen is different from cyanogenmod. One is the rooted power user rom, the other is some more standard style rom without root.

This is for Cyanogen OS, not CyanogenMod.

CyanogenMod is the "canonical" generic Android distribution, while Cyanogen OS is a derivative created for monetization purposes and installed by default on some devices.

Uhm, why does techcrunch not mention that Cortana's deep integration in Android sounds a lot like Google Now's deep integration into Android? And I agree with others, how can adding a large app that sends data to MS help with bloat or security?

I had a good laugh reading the article about how Cyanogen is trying to steal Android from Google, as well. Too funny!

How can anyone steal an open source OS?

It's not really "stealing" but you could theoretically fork it and gain enough market share on your fork that your version becomes what people think of when you say Android.

But, Google open sourced it so they're cool with that. I still don't see the issue here.

Allowing forking (by the license) does not mean that Google likes forking.

That is how these things work. If an org isn't willing to allow forking then they forking shouldn't have open sourced it. The FACT that Google open sourced it tells me THEY DON'T MIND.

Then why did Google threaten to banish Acer from the OHA if they dared release even a single device running a fork, partnered with a competing search engine?

Google has made it very clear they are opposed to so-called 'incompatible' forks of Android, and that they consider pretty much anything not running Google's proprietary services to be 'incompatible'.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/sep/19/android-ch...

> And your app store contains Android apps (including pirated Google apps).

I think THIS was the issue, not the forked Android.

Amazon has a forked Android. Cyanogen has one.

Acer isn't responsible for what Aliyun puts in it's app store, and that's NOT the issue, Google made clear in their response: Google doesn't allow OHA members (companies allowed to ship the Play Store) to sell any devices with forks. Amazon isn't an OHA member. Cyanogen may have something interesting going on, because AFAIK they're compliant with whatever OHA terms they currently have agreed to.

What kind of thinking is that? Google open sourced it because they HAD TO. Linux is GPL so they had no other choice. Whether or not they mind is a different issue.

Indeed, as tingol wrote, parts (as the Linux kernel) had to be open sourced. But also for the large rest I believe open sourcing Android had more advantages than disadvantages for Google - thus it made sense. This does not contradict the fact that Google might not be fond of forks.

Android the OS isn't where the value lies. It is the Android ecosystem - the applications, drivers, and hardware.

Google has essentially taken over the ecosystem via their Google Play API. I know this first hand as my beloved Blackberry OS 10 was able to run Android apps. Now this is almost impossible as the majority of apps created in the last few years have hooks into Google's APIs and absolutely won't work without all of Google's hooks into your privacy.

I don't imagine roms that avoid GApps will be a viable alternative in a year or two either.

Microsoft has been trying to develop an ability to run Android apps on their phones, and it looks like they're giving up too due to Google's lock on the APIs.

Yes, of course they can't steal the source code, nor the OS itself. There OS is used in a broader sense. They want to steal Google's position of inmense power in the Android ecosystem.

While Android is 'technically' open source, from a practical sense, it is not. It's primarily controlled by the Google MADA agreement, which is how Google dictates terms to OEMs. OEMs have very little ability to negotiate this agreement, and they have almost no alternative to accepting it.

If Microsoft was able to present a viable alternative, such that manufacturers could choose to use Microsoft's flavor of Android over Google's, it'd effectively wrestle control of Android away from Google, because Google would no longer be able to impose such strong terms over access to things like the Play Store.

This is correct, although this isn't likely. Replicating the end-user cloud services Google provides is hard enough, but replicating the app store could be much harder since so many Android apps are written to call Google Play Services APIs. Microsoft would have to spend considerable resources getting developers to rewrite (and even harder, maintain!) their Android apps to target Microsoft equivalents for Play Services. Perhaps an easier sell to developers than "hey, learn C# and build your app from scratch for Windows Phone", but easier than impossible does not necessarily mean possible.

Possibly, but not likely for a while. The Play Store is the one with all the Android apps. There'd have to be something quite compelling to get developers, especially ones using Google services in their apps, to support the Microsoft or Cyannogen stores. Because there'd still be a cost in supporting the alternative store, and so far most developers aren't wanting to do that.

It doesn't. But I guess 'deep integration' sounds like something sexy that every single phone OS should have with an onboard voice AI. This is frighteningly expensive if you get into doing this on your own. So this integration with MS' Cortana is their solution to the entire conundrum (while still managing to be different enough from Google's version of Android)

Cyanogen, you were the chosen one. You were supposed to eliminate the bloatware, not add it!

I've used Cortana and apart from a little minor anthromorphic work to give her a 'personality' (like Siri), I wouldn't say that it's too far ahead of Google Now in terms of features and functionality. Baking Cortana into Cyanogen OS seems a little like overkill in terms of deviating from Google's version of Android

I think there are a few things at play here. First, is people want this functionality. Second, they're likely getting some funding from MS for doing this (Cyanogen OS, similarly is about making a living, or profit for that matter). Third, Google's integration from Apps, to the Play Store comes with a lot of strings attached, and it makes sense for Cyanogen to avoid as much of that as possible.

Personally, I want as close to a pure android experience as possible, and may move from the OnePlus One to whatever the next smart phones from Google/Nexus at the end of the year are (or current if my phone drops). The only thing I really like about my OPO over others, currently is my back cover is the bamboo option, and I really appreciate natural/wood when it's available for a product.

I agree completely. I don't see any justification for doing this, and it just further confuses and adds complexity to the user experience. MS/Cortana will never be able to offer as deep integrations across Android as Google does with Now, and that gap's only going to continue to grow as more 3rd party devs create Now cards and Now intents within their apps. I don't see that happening at all with Cortana.

I'm using an Android Phone with mostly Microsoft apps: Outlook, OneDrive, Skype, OneNote, Account App, Health, Excel, Word. For me Cortana integrates better compared to Google Now, as it can access my information.

Why not? Remember, this is Cyannogen's distribution, so they could change it up so that the things that would be answered by Now are answered by Cortana. Now cards might not carry over, but that shouldn't be a big deal. And Cyannogen should be able to make Cortana respond to the Now intents.

Indeed, Cortana's integration with Windows Phones is quite similar to Google Now's with Android. At least as far as the APIs which are open components of Android, rather than proprietary Play services, Cortana should be able to pick up the same intents and all.

It's cool to see that Cortana (feels weird to say that because avid Halo player) would have the capability to access and work with 3rd party applications. It's something that I really wish iOS had, Oh well they need something as part of their n-Amount of "new" features for iOS X.

I think this kind of intelligent personal assistant is quite useless. Especially for people who are non-native English speaker. The voice recognition is bad and always requires internet connection. This kind of software consumes computing & storing resources.

I don't think it is a good idea for any company to integrate it in the OS.

It's hilarious how many people are confused about the proprietary Cyanogen OS vs. the open source Cyanogenmod. Really makes you wonder what they were thinking when they named it the same thing.

What is currently an alternative to Cyanogen, that would be relatively easy to install and provide a fairly minimal but comfortable environment?

CyanogenMod

AOKP, if that is what you want AOKP was always the actually right choice.

And what phone can I put it on without irreversibly voiding my warranty?

I tried Android a few years ago on an LG G2. Rooting to install CyanogenMod was an EXTREMELY STRESSFUL EXPERIENCE; and flashing back to stock to return the fucking thing every time it broke (every other month) was even more stressful.

I'm on an iPhone now because it works well and doesn't shit out every 5 minutes like my G2 did, but I'm becoming increasingly aware of the myriad ways that my personal privacy is being violated by the apps and services that I use, and I'm considering jumping ship again.

But I can't handle the constant stress of hardware breaking and having to frantically scramble around, downloading random zips off of weird mirrors from the XDA forums and wiping my phone back to stock so I can return it and go through the same thing again, a week later.

I see your issue, its the choice of phone actually. Also if a lot of people don't want to hear that, but if you plan to actually use your phone there are not that many android devices to actually choose from.

I have a G3 currently and it also sucks, before that i always had Nexus phones and with them everything worked perfectly without any issues all the time. Non locked, easy to root, many tutorials and many helping tools.

You need to make sure the manifacturer has a open bootloader. I think only Sony does this most of the time, LG promised to but failed it with the G3, not sure about the G4.

No idea about the warranty tho, in my country i can do whatever i want (terms of software) with the hardware i bought, they cant take my warranty for software changes. But again nexus does not care for example.

Also don't use any crazy roms. Use common ones like Cyanogen or AOKP, no forks from one man teams or shit like that. AOKP is more stable and smooth than Vanilla Android in my experience.

When I went to buy a Nexus, they weren't available on Verizon, so I went for the LG G2.

They are available on Verizon now though, it seems. It might be worth a look.

Thanks for the info.

Interesting. I have an LG-G2 and it's been a really nice phone. In fact I see no reason to buy anything else for now. IE: Nothing that has come out recently has made me even think about getting rid of my G2.

I have an iPhone 6 for work (work issued). It's pretty nice too.

The headphone jack on mine broke every 5-6 weeks, period - no matter how careful or ginger I was with it. I used it in the same exact way that I've used every other phone or MP3 player that I've ever had, and it just couldn't hang together. It was really disappointing... I really wanted it to work for me. :(

I'm really glad that you haven't had that experience!

I have something similiar with my G3, i actually bought a mp3 player to even be able to listen to music again.

"but I'm becoming increasingly aware of the myriad ways that my personal privacy is being violated by the apps and services that I use, and I'm considering jumping ship again."

The grass isn't greener on the other side.

OmniRom was a thing. Haven't checked them out recently.

And so...

Now it becomes clear...

Now we know who was truly behind the mammoth effort to produce Cyanogen all along.

What is happening on your smartphone screen is the next battleground for even more data points. Those who will be able to get access to, are only a few (Apple, Google, MS) and mostly only one of them at once.

- Google Now can screen scrap your current screen and use it how they wish as processing is done on the server side.

- Siri is well embedded within the iOS ecosystem since a couple of years

- Since MS' investment in Cyanogen, the try to push Cortana into more devices. Same as with Windows 10.

I really don't like it. As long as we can still turn such features off, I'm fine.

The irony and joke is that this is just another wave of standardsless spyware. For example, there is no way to do "voice commands" on desktop Linux because all these systems are proprietary and rely on huge processing networks owned by big tech to implement, and they use them as "features" to sell their particular flavor of vendor lock-in.

Mycroft is literally the only attempt to remedy this but of course you face brick walls to trying to get any interoperatbility between these cloud networks.

Cyanogen user on n4 for a long time because I don't want g' bits and bytes on my cellphone I find this unsettling. I see the following points on it (I would refrain from calling them plus or cons).

-The reason I did the change is avoid G using MY device as their personal Wifi scanning station, the switch meant battery 2-3x more, I hope Microsoft doesn't mess with Android that way.

-If they roll it for all devices I hope they keep a version without it, or an extra package to install like g apps.

-Nice to see Microsoft being so flexible and going on so many fronts, the more they diversify the better, if this makes Android better; Android users win.

-Could this be the start of Microsoft Android?.

-Does "deep integration" offer any kind of advantage?.

Last time I checked you could turn off the wifi scanning, easily.

As for the "deep integration", I believe that just means they configured the screen-off hotword (which uses the Qualcomm hexagon adsp).

This is only for the commercial offering of Cyannogen. The random roms out there for different phones that you flash yourself are not part of this.

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