KitKat’s primary interface is Google Search | Hacker News Reader

KitKat’s primary interface is Google Search

arstechnica.com

74 pointskunai71 comments

> The dialer and incoming call screen now automatically perform Google searches for phone number information (and will display Google Ads)

Of course Android is still more 'open', but as a person who dislikes advertisements, I feel like Apple products might be the less user-hostile choice now.

Following that link leads to a G+ post showing the relevant lines of UI XML, but the comments on the same Google+ page seem to indicate that the advertisement string has existed (and been unused, and continues to be unused) since Android 1.6.

Disaster averted... for now? :/

But isn't the phone number information part intriguing? You dial a phone number (or just had been called from one), and it potentially provides you with company name, address, operating hours. Directions are just a touch away. After you complete a call, it could ask you if you'd like to insert a calendar item at the listed address.

This is welcome functionality for me. Google's ads all said and done seem to be fairly unobtrusive, so I trust that if there are advertisements (beyond this), it won't be hostile.

That means that Google will have information on its server covering all phone calls I make, and at what time. That is way beyond what is acceptable, for me.

Really? I make like... 3 calls a week from my phone, generally of low importance. I deal in hundreds of emails which range from the trivial to bank account details. Why would I trust Google with the latter and not the former?

Being an Android user doesn't imply being a Gmail user.

For like 99% of Android users it does.

Here in China people barely use emails and never use gmail, and most run android.

Or maybe your note needs to add "in my little personal tiny slice of the world" context?

Wait, what? What do people in China use instead of emails? Do they just use SMS all of the time?

educate yourself

http://news.yahoo.com/android-huge-china-google-control-0359...

In what way does that link answer the question?

Just to reiterate: What do people in China use instead of e-mail?

They use message services such as QQ and WeChat.

Are you saying they use messaging service instead of Email? Citation please?

Most people use both messaging service and email, each for different purpose. For example, it's easier to create new topic with email. It's easier to attach a file. It can be automate for mailing list and have easier address for support email.

How does QQ or WeChat replace that in China?

Sorry, not convenient to search the topic on my phone, but it is kind of common knowledge in China. Our young and old nannies all use qq, and they probably have an email attached to their account but do not know it. many colleagues and friends even with higher education rarely check their mail, maybe reuse a week.

So you'd ask, how to share contacts? All goes through the phone number, every one has one and know it.

Qq is much more than our text messaging, it can share files, and is easier than mail for that.

When I hear all the fuss about fixing email I can't help but think that it is already fixed in China.

And, of course, I already give the same information to my phone company. But really it's an issue of combining that data with what Google already knows about me (location throughout the day through Android location services, phonebook through Android sync, gmail, web search history, web browsing history through its tracker network, and so on). I do appreciate that my argument and my actual use of the internet are inconsistent, my only defence is I am just in the process of working out how to move to some different services, to at least fragment where I'm sending my data.

For advertisments, maybe.

If they were interested in privacy, it wouldn't be difficult to fetch top-10,000 information for municipalities you live in. It could pre-fetch data for future locales if it sees you have a plane ticket somewhere... just a thought.

I doubt Google could provide you relevant feedback for a private phone number 2,000 miles away anyhow--that would basically be just trolling for information.

Since Google apps tie into Google plus, how long before Google touts how every phone call made to and from an android phone is a G+ activity? Sounds like a huge headline opportunity to me.

[Edit] Thinking more about this, and how G+, gmail and hangouts are melding together, you have to wonder how Google plans to leverage this new feature/info. Will people who call me suddenly appear in my gmail IM list as contacts?

Are "phone calls" between Android users with sufficiently up-to-date versions of the OS routed entirely over the internet as G+ voice chats? iOS bypasses carrier SMS with iMessage, and, I think, Facetime audio-only calls between capable devices. Seems like the next logical progression.

No. This would be rather noticeable as depends on data connection quality. Apple diverting SMS is somewhat less error prone.

there are apps for that and have been for ages if that is what you want.

they are all opt in and they don't automatically route all your phone call history and meta data to Google.

this is user hostile in the same way mandatory Google+ was. it's also another step in a slippery slope of android being less open and more of a source to feed Google data pipe.

what we're seeing here is the end of android as it was originally envisioned. and that makes me sad.

> this is user hostile in the range way mandatory Google+ was.

So, not hostile at all?

For me it was one if several reasons to quit Google apps. I would definitely consider it both intrusive and hostile.

" so I trust that if there are advertisements (beyond this), it won't be hostile. "

So often we make this decision based on obtrusiveness of the ads. What about the information you give away every time an ad is shown, or a search performed on your behalf?

This was my reaction right away as well. But anymore when it comes to "convenience" there is certainly a price to be paid. Here, it is (at a minimum) perceived loss of privacy.

Just as I intentionally inconvenience myself to avoid places like McDonald's, I'll do the same here.

ArsTechnica has redacted the statement about displaying ads.

So you want to choose between a company that sells you ads for any service you want to use vs a company that limits which products you may use?

thanks, i will go with the third option. I will stick with 3rd party androids, and when google acquire-shut 'em all (e.g. cyanogen) i will hope firefox phones have improved.

Depends on the user, of course. Can't an Android user swap those out? And install ad blockers on their browser as well? You'll never get me to agree that the walled garden isn't user-hostile, but it is true that some users are unprepared or unwilling to make their way in the wilderness outside of it.

For about 2 months I have lived with almost no Google apps on my Android device, it has been crappy but I no longer trust them sadly. Looks like with 4.2 on this is going to be near impossible. I really want a decent open source, FOSS phone OS to come along. And before tin foil hat accusations are thrown at me, anyone who believes the relentless drive from Google to shove search, Google + and targetted advertising down people's throats is not getting out of hand needs a reality check, Google actually looks pretty desperate to me. Really hoping a decent Firefox OS phone or something else can come along, as it stands, I'll stick with CyanogenMod 10.1 and use F-Droid / sideloading.

The article is very light on details what sort of user-visible impact this change will have. I don't really care if homescreen is defined in GoogleHome.apk or GoogleSearch.apk, I care about how the homescreen is functionally merged with search.

Is Cyanogen or any other Android distribution ready for prime time?

I happily run Debian everywhere but my phone, but it seems like hardware is still changing too fast for FOSS to keep up and maintain stability. If there's a sustainable and usable open solution, please comment.

I can't make the time/expertise to contribute directly to a project, but I'm happy to bug-test at the level of Debian 'testing' and do contribute monetarily to software/distros that work.

One thing that must work, always: 911.

> If there's a sustainable and usable open solution, please comment.

I'm looking at the Jolla/Sailfish phone. Seems to be a lot of ex-Nokia engineers trying to reboot the N9/Maemo. They're also shipping with fork of Dalvik (though I don't know how well that will work now that many APIs are moving into Play Services). I couldn't say much about the details, but at the least I'm happier buying a phone from a company that makes its money from selling phone hardware and software, rather than from data aggregation and advertising.

> now that many APIs are moving into Play Services

Which APIs are you thinking of? As far as I know, only a couple location services are in play service for no good reason.

There are examples on the recent ArsTechnica article:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-...

As you say, advanced location services, and then Cloud Messaging (an upgraded Push Notifications API), and some APIs which do accelerometer/sensor analysis. Maps API, Play Store In-App purchasing and Play Games (user accounts, cloud saves etc for game developers) are already there.

You're right to pull me up on the post, though. It's not really correct to talk about moving the APIs into Play Services, so much as developing what's there, and creating new interfaces with new, advanced features. But still, that doesn't alter the basic point, which is that a lot of Android Apps won't work on systems which do not have Play Services installed.

I'm running CM since my first android, works well. I had some issues but apps are responsible, and nothing some googling on sda didn't fix, eventually.

Firefox OS?

I've only ever used CyanogenMod (with no Google Apps). It works perfectly well. The only really important component I've swapped out is the e-mail client - I use "K9 Mail", mainly because it supports IMAP push.

Sure it works fine. I think as Google has forked the core apps some more community work on them would be useful. Unless we are all going to move to other OSs - seems like Ubuntu will be usable soon.

This seems to fall in line with Google's Android strategy of moving functionality out of the core OS and into Apps. This makes updates easier and faster because users only have to download the new version of the app and not update the OS.

I totally agree with your point. Not only does it bypass the need for an OS update, but it also allows more consistent experiences across all android devices.

While the cynic in me is deathly afraid of Google having complete control over my digital interactions, I find myself in favor of a Google-controlled experience. Google Now is making contextual computing possible in a way that no other company is remotely capable of bringing to the market. For the time being, I invite Google to control Android this way.

The launcher already was an app, right?

It was not available in the Play Store as a separate download, no - it was bundled with the OS.

out of aosp and into proprietary Google apps.

that's always a bad move. and they've been doing it a lot lately.

It depends on how you view it. From a FOSS standpoint, yeah it might be a bad thing. From a user experience standpoint, being able to get new features for your existing phone without having to install a custom ROM is a pretty big bonus.

They can disclose the source (without a license to distribute it). That'll go a long way in satisfying the FOSS audience, even if not perfect.

The problem is that google presents you with a false choice.

They COULD contribute their changes to AOSP, AND include them in a separate app, but choose not to.

From a user experience standpoint, being able to get new features for your existing phone without having to install a custom ROM is a pretty big bonus.

Which ironically is something you now don't get if you bought a Galaxy Nexus 18 months ago.

You can get everything that has been decoupled from the OS from the Play Store. That was my entire point, until you tried to derail it. The point is that upgrading the OS won't matter, because you can just update the app.

I believe this is primarily to fix the latency that existed when you tapped the little search bar up top. Before, the Search APK had to be launched—now its already running.

Does anybody actually use that search bar though? Maybe I'm alone, but I have a sort of "banner blindness" to the search bar -- I always swipe up from the home button to do a Google search no matter whether I want to see my Google Now cards or not.

I never use either. I open Firefox and tap my search terms into the awesome bar.

Wouldn't it be great if you could have Firefox as the home screen for your phone... Oh wait!

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/os/

Honestly, the number of times I switch apps when I meant to switch tabs in Firefox, I'd be pretty interested in a Firefox-based launcher/recent apps picker. Especially since Firefox has gotten better with the "open in an app" option in recent versions of Firefox/Android, I think it might be a powerful new launcher paradigm.

Ha. I just got a ZTE Open, mostly to hack on. It's cool, but not ready to be my primary phone yet.

I was blind to it for a long time. Now I use it all the time. It's very convenient, really.

I removed the widget from my homescreen. But I'm running Android ICS still. Maybe it can't be removed in the later versions?

Its not actually the search bar that's important: the Google Search APK is where all of the Google Now functionality lives. This change basically turns the home screen into Google Now.

Does this mean that third-party launchers won't work, even on custom ROMs?

If they do, will they simply sit "on top of" Google's launcher now?

If so, I don't like the idea of Google having that much level of access to data about my homescreen. Even if they're not accessing this data now, it seems that they're setting the stages for that a few versions from now.

> Does this mean that third-party launchers won't work, even on custom ROMs?

No, this is just an app launcher. You can still install a different one.

> I don't like the idea of Google having that much level of access to data about my homescreen. Even if they're not accessing this data now, it seems that they're setting the stages for that a few versions from now.

If you're running the default app launcher today, I don't know who you thought wrote "GoogleHome.apk", even if you didn't know the name. If you're not, then just keep running the one you are.

> If you're running the default app launcher today, I don't know who you thought wrote "GoogleHome.apk"

Well, that statement was in the case in which the third party launchers are no longer available (or simply a layer on top of the Google launcher, in which case Google still would collect the data either way).

If Google's launcher is fully replaceable, then that's not an issue, as long as it stays that way.

That's good to know. Does anyone know good open-source launchers for Android?

https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Laun...

Reading the developer release notes, it sounds like they are making it easier. I haven't played with it myself, so I don't know the details yet.

Third-party launchers still work fine. As far as I can tell this is just making the Google search app the default launcher on Nexus 5 / Google Play edition phones and adding launcher functionality to the Google search app.

Don't panic. No changes to API related to launchers was announced. That means launcher is still an app.

It means that googles launcher now has the same status as any other third party launcher. It isn't a built in system component, but just another piece that can be swapped out (or in) at will by the end user.

Remember that for the majority of android phones sold, Samsung is the company dictating what software is installed by default. This is a play to get users to replace Samsung's launcher with Google's launcher. They want nothing more than for you to use a third party launcher: theirs.

It is to be noted that Google is often blamed for utilizing and presenting the user information that it holds. The only difference between Google and other companies like Facebook and Apple is that they also hold user information but choose not to use it in a creative way. In the end all companies are gathering information about users. I am okay with Google's decision as long as users benefit out it.

I haven't used the stock launcher ever since the search bar became unremovable. I paid for Go Launcher to get rid of its ads, along with a couple of other bits and pieces to head off privacy leaks.

As long as the Android stays as loosely coupled as it is, with replaceable components, I'm not too worried.

So are widgets still supported?

Yes.

Is it possible to use KitKat and to disable Google Now and avoid the search bar?

So where's the chocolate?

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