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Comment by crunchlibrarian | Hacker News Reader

It seems like a pretty safe assumption that google will just play along with the Chinese government and force spyware into phones via play or some update mechanism, if they aren't already working on this.

Stopping people at random on the street to make sure an app is installed seems quite inefficient.

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Could be a pilot project

Stopping people on the street is also very bad PR and leads to submissions like this. They would be better off doing what you suggested.

This shows why it’s actually quite efficient. The bad PR is part of the whole effect. They don’t want to silently monitor these people, they want to control them, and making it known that they can be stopped at any time and forced to submit is part of the deal.

There's very little "playing along" between Google and China, far less than Apple. Search is the only product that has a chance of working there right now, Play Store is just dead weight there, and most companies that ship Android in China will bundle their own app store. Apple iOS bundles a spyware system module on the other hand (for China only).

“Apple iOS bundles a spyware system module on the other hand (for China only).“

You can’t just state this as fact without any sourcing. While they may be forced to do so in the future do you have proof this is happening now?

It's more hidden after iOS 7. If you want to start looking, check old GSCapabilities and go from there.

I started looking but the only thing related to china was this green tea thing, but

> "Green-Tea" is a code name for devices sold in China. Green-Tea devices have restricted access to various applications e.g. Maps.

isn't exactly a smoking colt for a spyware. Could you be more specific?

This is incorrect.

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