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This is an article on why you should stop using the Android operating system and find a more efficient, privacy-focused, and open alternative.
04.0 - Anti-competitive behavior
05.0 - Open Handset Alliance crippled
06.0 - Other things to check out
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Like other Google products, Android has a history of privacy and performance issues.
Android began as a project by a small team of developers for several years before Google bought it and continued development on it.
General description from Wikipedia: Android - Data from Februry 20th 2021 at 8:19:19 pm (PT: Pacific Time)
Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open source software, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android is developed by a consortium of developers known as the Open Handset Alliance and commercially sponsored by Google. It was unveiled in November 2007, with the first commercial Android device launched in September 2008.
It is free and open source software; its source code is known as Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which is primarily licensed under the Apache License. However most Android devices ship with additional proprietary software pre-installed, most notably Google Mobile Services (GMS) which includes core apps such as Google Chrome, the digital distribution platform Google Play and associated Google Play Services development platform. About 70 percent of Android smartphones run Google's ecosystem; competing Android ecosystems and forks include Fire OS (developed by Amazon) or LineageOS. However the "Android" name and logo are trademarks of Google which impose standards to restrict "uncertified" devices outside their ecosystem to use Android branding.
The source code has been used to develop variants of Android on a range of other electronics, such as game consoles, digital cameras, portable media players, PCs and others, each with a specialized user interface. Some well known derivatives include Android TV for televisions and Wear OS for wearables, both developed by Google. Software packages on Android, which use the APK format, are generally distributed through proprietary application stores like Google Play Store, Samsung Galaxy Store, and Huawei AppGallery, or open source platforms like Aptoide or F-Droid.
Android has been the best-selling OS worldwide on smartphones since 2011 and on tablets since 2013. As of May 2017, it has over two billion monthly active users, the largest installed base of any operating system, and as of January 2021, the Google Play Store features over 3 million apps. The current stable version is Android 11, released on September 8, 2020.
Google has a very very bad record when it comes to user privacy. (I could go on and on with evidence of this, but it took a long time to find and go through all these articles)
Privacy on Google products is always bad, due to all Google products containing spyware.
No matter what you do, when you are using Google, all of your sensitive personal data is being sent to Google and others. Google has also been spotted going through open programs. For example, from personal experience (on Firefox) with a YouTube tab open that I didn't visit, I watched several videos offline (VLC Media Player) Later when I went to check the recommendations, it was nearly everything that I had watched. There is no doubt they are spying on other programs too.
In Chrome (and many other browsers) an incognito mode is present. In Chrome, this mode is pointless, as Google will still mine your data. Even if you turn data mining/tracking off, and enable the "do not track" signal, surprise suprise, Google is still mining your data.
If you think you have nothing to hide, you are absolutely wrong. This argument has been debunked many times over:
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Edward Snowden remarked "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. "When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights."
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Daniel J. Solove stated in an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education that he opposes the argument; he stated that a government can leak information about a person and cause damage to that person, or use information about a person to deny access to services even if a person did not actually engage in wrongdoing, and that a government can cause damage to one's personal life through making errors. Solove wrote "When engaged directly, the nothing-to-hide argument can ensnare, for it forces the debate to focus on its narrow understanding of privacy. But when confronted with the plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use beyond surveillance and disclosure, the nothing-to-hide argument, in the end, has nothing to say."
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Adam D. Moore, author of Privacy Rights: Moral and Legal Foundations, argued, "it is the view that rights are resistant to cost/benefit or consequentialist sort of arguments. Here we are rejecting the view that privacy interests are the sorts of things that can be traded for security." He also stated that surveillance can disproportionately affect certain groups in society based on appearance, ethnicity, sexuality, and religion.
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Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert and cryptographer, expressed opposition, citing Cardinal Richelieu's statement "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged", referring to how a state government can find aspects in a person's life in order to prosecute or blackmail that individual. Schneier also argued "Too many wrongly characterize the debate as 'security versus privacy.' The real choice is liberty versus control."
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Harvey A. Silverglate estimated that the common person, on average, unknowingly commits three felonies a day in the US.
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Emilio Mordini, philosopher and psychoanalyst, argued that the "nothing to hide" argument is inherently paradoxical. People do not need to have "something to hide" in order to hide "something". What is hidden is not necessarily relevant, claims Mordini. Instead, he argues an intimate area which can be both hidden and access-restricted is necessary since, psychologically speaking, we become individuals through the discovery that we could hide something to others.
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Julian Assange stated "There is no killer answer yet. Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) has a clever response, asking people who say this to then hand him their phone unlocked and pull down their pants. My version of that is to say, 'well, if you're so boring then we shouldn't be talking to you, and neither should anyone else', but philosophically, the real answer is this: Mass surveillance is a mass structural change. When society goes bad, it's going to take you with it, even if you are the blandest person on earth."
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Ignacio Cofone, law professor, argues that the argument is mistaken in its own terms because, whenever people disclose relevant information to others, they also disclose irrelevant information. This irrelevant information has privacy costs and can lead to other harms, such as discrimination.
GAndroid is the same as all other Google products, it contains spyware, as Google is not just a search company, they are a user data company, and you are the product. To Google, you are only worth about $700.00 (unless you are making them ad revenue)
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Android is a mobile operating system. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to switch to another system, due to app dependencies, and other issues.
iPhoneOS/iOS/iPadOS - Although Proprietary, iOS/iPadOS is a big rival to Android and has been since the beginning. As of 2021, Google is really falling behind iOS, with some features being the same problem (iOS devices never had SD card support, recently, the S21 has removed the SD card again, the 2nd time this has been done on a Samsung Android device (last attempt: Samsung Galaxy S6) if not enough criticism is done, this could be permanent) Apple is a good choice when it comes to privacy when you compare them with Google, although there are many cons. Since Apple is not a big data company, and more of a software/hardware company, plus with their history of defending their users privacy, iOS can be a good alternate to Android if you have the money and the patience. Unlike Google, Apples business does not revolve entirely on using surveillance on its users and collecting as much money off as much data as possible. In the past, Apple has stood their ground on their user privacy stance, multiple times refusing to unlock the device of even terrorist Apple users (such as the bomber of the Boston Bombing massacre on April 13th 2013) even with the US government urging them to (although the US government ended up using tons of resources across 6 months to crack the singular device themselves, they didn't get it immediately due to Apple) if Apple won't unlock the device of a terrorist, they definitely aren't going to unlock your device. Don't be a terrorist though, nothing good comes out of using terrorism to try and achieve goals, it only makes you look bad and will most definitely end up in you being the subject of a manhunt and completely ruin your image forever after you die, although this is obvious.
Apple has been fighting extra hard for user privacy with iOS/iPadOS 14 and its minor updates. iOS/iPadOS 14.5 is an extremely good privacy alternate based on Apples claims, but we can't truly know, as the operating system is proprietary. Apple has added a plethora of privacy features, and has directly rivaled Facebook and Google with these updates. Facebook itself is now an enemy of Apple and is trying to cripple them before they get crippled further. If you do something to upset and damage Facebook, you are doing something right. Facebook might have its support removed on iOS, and Google is also fighting back, but hasn't updated any of their apps on iOS in nearly a year.
- Pros:
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High level encryption
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Many apps are compatible with iOS that are on Android
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Advanced settings
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Stable
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Very good security
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Memory efficient
6.1. Is not Android
- Cons:
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Operating system is proprietary
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Apple devices are low spec, and don't have an SD card,
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High amounts of RAM,
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High screen resolution.
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You will have to start from zero when it comes to Android app data
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System can only run on Apple devices, nearly impossible to run on another device
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Devices are expensive due to Apples markup, and can be 2-4x more expensive than their Android equivalent
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Customization is limited
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Not all Android apps have an iOS equivalent
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More cons coming soon
LineageOS - LineageOS is an operating system that required a rooted Android device, but is open source, and has strong privacy and security, along with great performance (it has such good performance that the latest version of LineageOS (as of February 20th 2021) is able to run successfully on a Samsung Galaxy S2 (Android device from 2011 that only has 1 Gigabyte of RAM, and 16/32 Gigabytes of storage, of which Google hasn't supported since 2013)
Ubuntu Touch - Ubuntu Touch is a modified version of Ubuntu designed to run on tablets and smart phones. It has the stability and security of Ubuntu, and can run on many mobile devices. Rooting may be required to run on some devices. With modification, it can even be run on certain video game consoles (such as the Nintendo Switch)
Tizen - Free and open source Linux distribution that isn't based on Android that runs on various low-end smart phones and tablets. The project is backed by the Linux foundation, but is developed and used primarily by Samsung.
This list is incomplete
Google tries to keep you in its monopoly with Google apps, and making it harder to switch from Android.
Google uses Android to have an unfair leverage with their Google Chrome web browser, by forcing it to be the default browser on Android, and making it uninstallable without rooting the device (like many other pre-loaded apps, a lot of which you likely will never need, but are using up gigabytes of space) in 2020, Google was fined 5 billion euros by the European Union for this, but continues to do this, as the fine was just a drop in the bucket for them. With the act they were fined for, they have already made back their 5 billion within months.
For the development of Android, Google formed the Open Handset Alliance with several other companies to help create a open standard for mobile computing. Positive efforts towards this goal became more and more crippled over the years. As of Android 7.0 (August 22nd 2016) the guidelines are hardly followed, and dependencies on Google are forced.
The Google Graveyard (killedbygoogle.com) - a sorted list of the 224+ products Google has killed
Alphabet worker union - The new workers union at Google with over 800 members
Don't want to part with the dinosaur easter egg? This website has you covered
There are other alternates, just search for them.
Some fact checking is needed for this article
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All of my works are free from restrictions. DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) is not present in any of my works. This project does not contain any DRM
This sticker is supported by the Free Software Foundation. I never intend to include DRM in my works.
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