In a public response to recent patent clashes between Google and their competitors, Google’s representatives said that this is only a part of an organized action against Google backed Android mobile OS.
One of the highly ranked managers in Google, David Drumond wrote in his blog about the recent patent infringement campaign against Google and manufacturers of Android OS devices waged by an unlikely alliance of Microsoft, Oracle and Apple. He said that the ubiquitous success of Android OS has lately provoked a concerted and unacceptable action by aforementioned companies based on suspicious patent claims.
Mr Drumond also mentioned concerted action by Apple and Microsoft in an effort to win the auction for Nortel patents, calling for swift action by US Justice Department based on anti competitive actions.
He didn’t mention Google’s possible action against Lodsys which lately sues Android app developers for infringing on bogus patents. Apple on the other side has taken action against Lodsys to protect their developers. And knowing that Samsung has silently delayed launch of their Android tablet Samsung Tab 10.1 on Australian market because Apple has filled legal complaints against them in Australian courts and that Taiwanese HTC was pressured by Microsoft to pay $5 for every smartphone they sell, Google has a lot of reasons to be concerned.
It is true that Android has gained a leading position on the mobile OS market but as Apple captures most of the profits and Microsoft tries to increase the price of Android, Google will soon have to take action or otherwise they will certainly lose their leading position. And this wouldn’t be anything new. Look at Nokia and RIM for example. A couple of years ago Nokia was the leading manufacturer of cellphones. Now the company is in big trouble, same as RIM with their business oriented Blackberries.
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While Apple‘s iOS, Nokia’s Symbian and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 OS are completely or almost completely free from malware apps, Android is under heavy attack. There is a new kind of a malicious software which can record and share your calls without your consent. The app looks like a normal, safe app but after you install it, the app downloads an additional file. Afterwards the app will start recording your calls. It is also capable of saving the file in .amr format which can later be uploaded to remote online servers of course without you knowing what is going on. Earlier we have seen troyan apps which have gathered logs on your calls, like the number dialed, duration of the call and so on.
This is certainly a great weakness for Android, as you know there is almost no restrictions for apps entering Android Market, which is the opposite of Apples policies. Apple has strict policies regarding malware apps, and none have being allowed to enter iTunes App Store so far.
You can protect you Android device if you install some anti virus app from the market, but be very very careful, as many malicious apps infect computers and mobile platforms under the guise of security apps! Do your homework carefully before installing an app on your device. Read reviews, ask friends and members of Android user forums, about experiences with apps before you finally install them. otherwise you can easily loose a lot including your privacy and sensitive data.
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A consortium of giants which included such names as Microsoft, EMC, Sony, Ericcson, RIM and Apple has bought all remaining patents in Nortel portfolio for a sum of incredible $4.5 billion after a bidding in an auction held during the last week. The purchase includes more than 6,000 various patents and patent claims which were owned by now bankrupted Canada based telecommunications company Nortel Networks. This portfolio includes patents on wireless, technologies, voice communications, 4G technologies and data transmission among others.
Interestingly one of the losers in this fight for intellectual property were Intel and Google which offered $900 million. As often in such high profile auctions, the whole deal attracted significant attention form US government, because of implications of this purchase on unfair competition and potential breaches of federal anti trust laws.
It seems that the patent wars are becoming ever more important as a tool for dealing with competitors as we had to see recently in such cases as Apple against Samsung and vice versa. The smartphone industry is especially vulnerable for such patent clashes as many patents for hardware solutions in smartphones were previously used in standalone electronic devices. This sale will be on hold on until it becomes officially approved by courts in Canada and US later this year. Another win of Apple against Google?
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Apple and Google continue the fight for hearth and minds of users. Google has began offering streaming movie rentals in order to compete with iTunes Store which already offers a wide choice of downloading and streaming options. The new movie renting by Youtube comes at what is considered standard rate of fees which means that most of the content will be offered for anywhere between $2 and $4. More experienced Youtube users know that there are already many free movies available on the popular video sharing platform. But now with this upgrade you will be able to access more recent and popular movies like: Little Fockers, Inception and Despicable Me as well as classics hits like: Goodfellas, Once upon a time in America, The Matrix and others.
The price of renting movies will be quite acceptable and you will be finally able to get your favorite movie in a simple way. You will be able to watch movies on any computer with broadband Internet access. You can see all new movies at this URL: www. youtube.com /movies so you can check this link from time to time. Unfortunately if you are based outside of US, you will be able to see only free movies. Additional options like like: behind the scene clips, interviews, movie ratings and other useful and interesting content will also be available. Another similarity to Apple’s iTunes video renting is that users will be able to watch the movie during a 30 days period after the initial purchase, and in 24 hours after you start viewing the movie.
Youtube has started negotiations with big Hollywood studios before more than a year, and since then has tested the service with many Google employees but it obviously took much longer to actually release the service to the public. The reasons for this delay probably include a variety of technical and legal tasks which were needed to be solved.
Are you eager to watch streaming movies on Youtube? Any chance this could compete with iTunes video streaming services? What is your opinion on this?
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It seems that the location tracking problem is not something happening only on iPhone iOS. New rumors and reports indicate that Google is following these questionable practices to with their Andoid OS for mobile devices. Korean police has Lunched an investigation which included raiding of Google’s offices in Seoul, South Korea in order to find out more. The investigation was probably caused by widely held concern that the search engine giant is also involved in tracking smartphone users without any permission.
One of the most interesting areas for police work was Google’s Ad Mob advertisement system. It seems that there are reasonable doubts that Google’s Ad Mob mobile advertising system has been gathering sensitive personal data without any legal permission by South Korean government agencies. Google has confirmed that the their Seoul offices have indeed been raided by local police. No other informations have been released by Google except that the company has fully complied to all requests by the investigators.
Every technology can be used for different purposes, so for example location based services are excellent if you want to locate nearby stores or restaurants, but the same technology can be used for tracking you personal location. There are open possibilities for abuse of sensitive personal data and the companies involved should be pressured to ask for permission for collecting such data.
On the other side, Apple is preparing a new update to the iOS firmware with one of the main goals being removing the location tracking bug from the iOS.
What is your opinion on data privacy in iOS and Android world? Are you concerned about your own privacy?
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As you have probably read before Apple has started a lawsuit against Samsung in order to protect their trade mark and intellectual property. Now Samsung has decided to strike back and submit a counter suit in US courts against Cupertino company. The timing of this action of Samsung seems to be excellent as Apple is also a target in a recent iPhone tracking scandal which has brought a lot of negative publicity to the company. Also already two iOS device users based in US have also decided to pitch a a legal battle against Apple for the supposed unwarranted surveillance.
Steve Jobs has already said that this is not about tracking but about some other issue, and he also claimed that Android is certainly tracking their users. There are also some other rumors regarding that this could be Apple working on some new, traffic related project. Some experts even claimed that this location tracking was simply a bug in iOS and that it will be sorted out in the new iOS upgrade.
There were some apps released to counter this problem. One was released by Ryan Petrich and is named Untracked. Untracked is available for free in Cydia App Store and will disable location tracking. Additionally it will also it will delete the stored location data. However Apple is doing great business with their products and perhaps this surge of scandals and lawsuits is just other big players feeling threatened by the great results from Apple including them topping for first time Microsoft in terms of profits and revenues. While courts and judges decide what is true or not and who is guilty or not, we remain loyal Apple fans. Why? It is simply: we ask for the best and Apple gives us the best.
What is your stand on this? Do let us know.
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