But for that you have to blame Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Disney, a lot of banks, a lot of games for using what is basically DRM for apps.
I don’t think those entities had the leverage to force Google to add remote attestation to Android. Safetynet didn’t show up until 2014 when Android was already established enough that not being on Android wasn’t a realistic option for any of them.
Instead, I think it was mainly a move by Google to make it so any OEM shipping a fork of Android without Google’s blessing would have angry users because some of their apps wouldn’t run.
Google bought Widevine in 2010, so in my opinion they were already concerned about big corp’s interests above the users well before. I think SafetyNet is the natural evolution of that.
I think SafetyNet came with Google Pay for contactless payments, most likely at the request of the banks. They had to work with the banks for that, that’s when they got the leverage. If they didn’t they’d just go partner with Samsung instead, who already had Knox, and I did see Samsung Pay on my phone before Google Pay was available at all.
They also had to increasingly deal with shitty root detection libraries that were getting popular and excluding legitimate users because the latest Android changed things enough it looked modded to the apps. They probably saw it as a lesser evil to just take it in their hands.
You don’t need that much leverage to put enough pressure that there’s enough demands for a feature for the feature to get added. Android was dealing with a lot of fragmentation, piracy and quality problems already, Google needed people to see Android as not just the shitty budget option, they wanted to compete with the iPhone proper.
The entheusiast market only gets you so far. You need entheusiast buy-in at first, but then you have to pivot to end user “premium” experience, which is why brands like OnePlus eventually turn their back to the users that propped the company up. Regular users would rather pick the walled garden than the open world if it means their apps work better in the walled garden. The walled garden is a better experience for the average moron.
Google is concerned with its own interests and only behaves as if it’s concerned with anyone else’s when there’s a perceived benefit to Google.
There’s a chance the preferences of some app developers were a contributing factor for Google, but I’m convinced it was about reigning in OEMs more than anything else. Your comment cites fragmentation, and there were things like Fire Phone from Amazon that didn’t ship with Google services. Fire Phone failed because it wasn’t good, but if Amazon had iterated on it or someone else had done a better job, it might have taken a big chunk out of Google’s Android profits.
excluding legitimate users
I hate this framing.
I’m generally disappointed there wasn’t more outcry about Google creating a remote attestation scheme. Microsoft proposed one for PCs a decade earlier and the New York Times called it out as a corporate power grab. I’m not sure if there was a general shift in thinking, if people thought about phones differently from PCs, or if Google had enough of that “don’t be evil” glow people didn’t question it.
I don’t think those entities had the leverage to force Google to add remote attestation to Android. Safetynet didn’t show up until 2014 when Android was already established enough that not being on Android wasn’t a realistic option for any of them.
Instead, I think it was mainly a move by Google to make it so any OEM shipping a fork of Android without Google’s blessing would have angry users because some of their apps wouldn’t run.
Google bought Widevine in 2010, so in my opinion they were already concerned about big corp’s interests above the users well before. I think SafetyNet is the natural evolution of that.
I think SafetyNet came with Google Pay for contactless payments, most likely at the request of the banks. They had to work with the banks for that, that’s when they got the leverage. If they didn’t they’d just go partner with Samsung instead, who already had Knox, and I did see Samsung Pay on my phone before Google Pay was available at all.
They also had to increasingly deal with shitty root detection libraries that were getting popular and excluding legitimate users because the latest Android changed things enough it looked modded to the apps. They probably saw it as a lesser evil to just take it in their hands.
You don’t need that much leverage to put enough pressure that there’s enough demands for a feature for the feature to get added. Android was dealing with a lot of fragmentation, piracy and quality problems already, Google needed people to see Android as not just the shitty budget option, they wanted to compete with the iPhone proper.
The entheusiast market only gets you so far. You need entheusiast buy-in at first, but then you have to pivot to end user “premium” experience, which is why brands like OnePlus eventually turn their back to the users that propped the company up. Regular users would rather pick the walled garden than the open world if it means their apps work better in the walled garden. The walled garden is a better experience for the average moron.
Google is concerned with its own interests and only behaves as if it’s concerned with anyone else’s when there’s a perceived benefit to Google.
There’s a chance the preferences of some app developers were a contributing factor for Google, but I’m convinced it was about reigning in OEMs more than anything else. Your comment cites fragmentation, and there were things like Fire Phone from Amazon that didn’t ship with Google services. Fire Phone failed because it wasn’t good, but if Amazon had iterated on it or someone else had done a better job, it might have taken a big chunk out of Google’s Android profits.
I hate this framing.
I’m generally disappointed there wasn’t more outcry about Google creating a remote attestation scheme. Microsoft proposed one for PCs a decade earlier and the New York Times called it out as a corporate power grab. I’m not sure if there was a general shift in thinking, if people thought about phones differently from PCs, or if Google had enough of that “don’t be evil” glow people didn’t question it.