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Comment by keewee7 | Hacker News Reader

Good in theory but Google's Android apps and Google forbidding Indian telcom companies and Chinese smartphone manufactures from installing adwarecrap has made the ultra-cheap smartphone experience somewhat tolerable for hundreds of millions of people. It's all going to be insufferable adware hell from now on.

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I hope people don't make the assumption that anything that's not coming from Google is harmful and a potential adware/malware. People who support Apple's app store monopoly also use the same logic. Maybe the Indian government needs to push separate bills prohibiting manufactures from packaging crapware. But this is a step in the right direction IMO.

> Maybe the Indian government needs to push separate bills prohibiting manufactures from packaging crapware

One person's crapware is another person's batteries-included-ware.

We wouldn't want to ban Sony MP3 players from including an app that plays music, right?

Similar to how we wouldn't want iPods to be banned from coming with an in-built Apple Music.app client[1]

Google's bundled-in variant of an internet browser _may_ be as harmful as Safari on iOS or, quite formidably[2], Internet Explorer on Windows. But unless governments can unambiguously discern whether Chrome is adware/crapware or batteries-included-software we'd not get much use out of regulation.

[1] Please don't flame on me with "iPods don't have Apple Music". What I meant to say is that the on-device application software that ran on iPods is _identical_ to that running on macOS, iPhone etc. It's pretty much the exact same music player code.

[2] IE bundling into Windows is literally what got Microsoft branded as anti-competitive by the Justice Dept. in the late 90s / early 2000s

> We wouldn't want to ban Sony MP3 players from including an app that plays music, right?

Maybe? There was that time Sony decided to install a rootkit when you played a CD

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

If Apple ipod is market leader in music player then the device owner should be able to uninstall the "Apple music" and install any 3rd party developed music player on it, this should be OK.

"One person's crapware is another person's batteries-included-ware."

Point me at an android phone mfg in the past couple years that didn't come with not just FB preinstalled, but unable to delete. Or a samsung phone that doesn't have that annoying nagware you can't get rid of.

This isn't about 'batteries included' its about junkware being made impossible to remove.

What makes you special enough we all have to do things your way? Nothing. Just putting up with nonsense pushed by the likes of people who think they know best.

pixel?

moto phones

Nokia

We don't need to assume. We have decades of experience and data showing that mobile operators will jam phones full of as much spyware, adware, and experience-ruining garbage as they are legally and technically able.

Yeah, this is basically why Android One, Pixel & Nexus phones, and phones with “Stock Android” we’re/are so popular among tech people because they didn’t come with the carrier or OEM forced uninstallable crapware.

Well, it’s a good thing we have real lawyers and judges - one of which knocked Epics silly defense that Apple has a monopoly on its own platform was just like saying Sony had a monopoly on PS games that can be distributed.

other comment mentioning that "Ambani’s Reliance co will launch search next month." is not realistic. I mean even Bing is not able to capture significant market share of Google after all these years.

> Google forbidding Indian telcom companies and Chinese smartphone manufactures from installing adwarecrap has made the ultra-cheap smartphone experience somewhat tolerable for hundreds of millions of people.

however, this comment is also related to Ambani’s Jio (Subsidiary of Reliance) are planning to launch Android devices. And mind it, Jio is one of the largest telecom provider in India with the blessing of ruling party. Jio also have suits of all kind of applications like chat, payment, audio streaming like Spotify, and what not, etc. which is less of utility app and can be use as surveillance system for the government in the future.

India is heading towards government system like deadly mix of Russia in terms of democracy and China in terms of surveillance system (look at the recent telecom act amendment proposed by government in last month. Basically it can force any VoIP services such as WhatsApp to verify user identity.)

Current government was not approving WhatsApp license for UPI for years until after WhatsApp decided to invest in Jio [https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/24/india-approves-facebooks-5...] At that time few peoples were discussing that this investment is nothing but to bribe government and/or Jio to get UPI license. Now WhatsApp got that permission [https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/13/whatsapp-permitted-to-exte...]

Ah! the whole theory that Reliance is a BJP's poodle. Go back and look 1986 Cricket World Cup and what is it named.. and .. you got it right, Reliance Cup.

The Ambanis are no one's poodles all Indian Politicians are their poodles. The monumental growth of Reliance from a small textile company to a petro-chemical behemoth to a huge conglomerate happened under the rule of Indian National Congress.

> The Ambanis are no one's poodles all Indian Politicians are their poodles.

I am not denying that. But the way, current government is working, good luck with current situation improving anymore. And BJP or Congress or any other party politicians, especially in India, like to enjoy absolute control over citizens. So by some miracle if other party got in power in future then also they will not work to correct wrong done by current government.

*1987…but other than that, spot on

So basically you're saying that here's an American company that is monopolising a critical market in my country, but I prefer that monopoly to continue because I have built up this scenario in which an Indian company might monopolise it instead.

Interesting.

I mean, yes, quite literally, because Google's "monopolisation" pales in comparison to the insane influence Jio already has. Jio was the first telecom in India that required it's users to submit fingerprints to get a SIM card. You can't get more explicitly dystopian than that - want internet? Submit your fingerprints so we can link it to your National Identity Document and who you call/text.

This is a complete fabrication. Aadhaar verification via biometrics was permitted for all financial, telecom and other services simultaneously. I got fingerprinted for an Airtel SIM and a Kotak Bank account first and Jio much later.

> This is a complete fabrication.

it isn't fabrication, when fingerprint authentication was (may be still) the ONLY option provided by Jio. I went to buy Jio sim and decided to not buy only because there wasn't other option like submitting copy of document which all other telecom companies provide.

One is a monopoly because they outcompeted their competitors, the other is a monopoly due to state force.

Open access will also enable OSS apps. Having alternatives would be terrific.

> It's all going to be insufferable adware hell from now on.

Didn't American telecom companies try this? And then the customers eventually found it all insufferable, so the practice was canned?

That's mostly because of iOS where Apple has a complete control over. If the half of the market cannot play with those garbage, it is much harder to do that for the rest as well thanks to competition. But AFAIK, iOS has a pretty minimal presence in India so it's not going to be the same situation.

Except Motorola (now owned by Lenovo and claims closest to default Android) most of the Chinese phones still come with their own bloatware. Xiaomi has many default apps including their own Messaging, file manager, dialer. These come with their own user agreement and privacy policy.

Some of these apps are good to have while others are just bloat.

Motorola is chinese??

I believe Lenovo is, but it's been a while since I've actually looked it up.

Samsung too has a tonne of bloatware crap. I bought a phone for 30K (which is a decent amount for a phone IMO) and it was loaded with absolute crap I don't use and can't even remove with adb.

> adwarecrap

You mean Google bundling their apps with spyware, then sending me ads based on the info gathered is not adwarecrap?

Its adware. It's also better than a lot of apps that fall into the crap category. For instance, maps will show me maps that are farily accurate. Many of the bundled apps i would get in the past - verizon maps or whatever - weren't actually able to do their purported job, just display ads until crash.

In the past few years, the Google experience has been devolving. GMail loads a ton of JS, app sizes are larger and apps are slower, and Maps won't even show me the name of the town I'm currently in, while navigating (and the UI is terrible).

If it weren't for traffic data and good geocoding, I'd be using OsmAnd all the time (the overall UX is about the same).

> It's all going to be insufferable adware hell from now on.

The same sorts of rules should prevent those companies from blocking alternative operating systems (including plain AOSP) from supporting the phones of those insufferable adware smartphone manufacturer companies.

But I've been always disabling (using Android Debug Bridge) native Google apps (Gmail, Youtube ...) and using alternatives from F-Droid including apps for phone call and messaging. In fact, I have avoided signing into Play Store on all androids I have ever used so far.

having tried android such as samsung vivo huawei xiaomi - everything just sucks.

switched to apple and it is better, doesnt prompt too much for tracking.

i don't understand what you are trying to say?

I read it as "Google having control was bad, but Google had been using that control to stop very bad things, so in practical terms this is actually bad news."

nah.... sure we will have ad filed stores and all that bs but that is currently happening on xiaomi and realme phones anyways.... they have OS level ads and people are fine with it....

i am interested in having F-droid as a respectable store that has some more polish, aurora-store type features would be nice things to have.

and having ability to "delete system apps" that is only possible on stock android or in my case moto phones only.... i don't have google crap installed and untill now, xiaomi/realme/oppo and others couldn't do that even if they wanted. now they can.....

think of it this way. W10, w11 has a lot of nonsense but for technically inclined, there is the debloater so anyone who is interested can do that and that should happen here also

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