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Android money

On Monday, a story bankrupt that Google Play — the near-ubiquitous service that Google uses to distribute software within Android — was using GPS to track your every movement, whether yous enabled Google Maps to use location tracking or not. The only style to completely disable this kind of location tracking is to disable Google Play.

This is all true, as far as it goes. But the conclusions are a bit less cut-and-dried than some publications like The Register have fabricated it sound. Let'southward break it down.

Starting time of all, it's true that location services are integrated into Google Play and that Google actively encourages developers to employ Google Play services, rather than the open-source location APIs that are office of AOSP (Android Open up Source Project). This is a theme nosotros've discussed before in other contexts — Google has been replacing AOSP components with its ain, airtight-source mechanisms for years now, and it requires the phone OEMs to hold to adequately onerous terms in exchange for aircraft Google Play. This core disagreement is why Amazon forked Android and created its own distro. Information technology's why there's limited overlap by default between the apps that are available on Amazon hardware and what you get with Google Android. (Amazon Fire tablets tin can install the Google Play Shop, but they don't ship with it installed by default and you have to jump through some hoops to get everything working).

Google has a set of APIs, including location-based, that run through Google Play, and there's some business organization in the EU virtually how this may accept impacted the competitive market. Because these APIs are linked to Google Play, yous may see popular-ups in some cases that aren't coming through specific applications like Google Maps. And then how does this relate to the tweet from Mustafa Al-Bassam, the security researcher who first discussed the effect?

Mustafa1

It'due south been speculated that what happened to Al-Bassam is linked to Nearby, a new feature Google described last June:

[G]etting the right apps at the right fourth dimension tin exist tough if you don't already know about them. Then, nosotros're introducing a new Android feature called Nearby, which notifies you of things that tin can be helpful near yous.

For example:
Print photos straight from your phone at CVS Pharmacy.
Explore historical landmarks at the University of Notre Dame.
Download the audio bout when you're at The Broad in LA.
Skip the customs line at select airports with Mobile Passport.
Download the United Airlines app for free in-flight entertainment while you wait at the gate, before y'all lath your flying.

Tagging you lot to download the McDonald's application when you step inside a shop is correct in line with the kind of "Nearby" function Google wants to implement. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

A naught-sum game

Bots and personal digital assistants are a hot topic these days. From Microsoft to Facebook, companies want to talk about how they're edifice new types of software to assistance with your appointment calendar, social life, grocery shopping, customer service, and ordering fast food. This is the logical extension of targeted advertising, which tries to bear witness y'all advertising for things yous might be interested in, based on things you've recently purchased or sites yous've visited.

The problem with targeted advertising is that information technology's intrinsically reactive. To use ane common example: Run a agglomeration of searches for airlines and air travel, and yous'll start seeing ads pop up for those services. But what if you've already booked your plans? You might run into more ads for headphones after yous get-go researching, only most people aren't going to buy a second prepare of headphones immediately after buying the kickoff. Google Nearby is meant to alert you lot to interesting events or places in your immediate vicinity, but it too gives Google the ability to make a connectedness between you and a corporation that didn't previously be. Google's own instance cites prompting users to download a video-on-need application from a particular provider while waiting at an airline terminal gate — a gate that the OS knows is assigned to United every bit opposed to Delta or JetBlue.

There are only 2 ways for a service similar Nearby to provide that kind of customized part: Either the OS knows that you lot're traveling on United because it has access to your calendar and/or electronic mail, or it knows your location. Ideally, from Google'due south perspective, it knows both. This allows the Os to get-go making assumptions about what you're going to do next. This idea is nothing new; stories about how "smart fridges" of the future would be able to automatically tell you when you're out of food are literally decades former. What's new is the fashion these features are tied to corporate interests and advertising.

Imagine a future in which Siri or Cortana recommends flights to y'all based on your known travel times and preferred departure dates. Give them permission, and they'll keep a tireless watch on flying prices for the locations you prefer. If you lot're driving, your digital banana might offer y'all a custom-congenital listing of the cheapest gas along your road within a specified altitude from the interstate. If Apple tree succeeds at killing off the headphone jack, hereafter computers will automatically know the names of the devices we claw to them — and that means Cortana / Siri / Google At present would be able to suggest replacement headphones for you lot before you've finished the "s" in "cleaved headphones." Combine drone commitment with fast nutrient and precise geolocation monitoring, and you lot've got a organisation in which Domino's can literally deliver a pizza to your exact location (provided yous're exterior, anyway).

Maybe you like these ideas. Maybe you lot experience like they're a bridge too far and an invasion of privacy. Just either way, the hereafter that Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and other companies envision is one in which your every movement, interest, and desire are tracked, combined, bought, sold, and turned into sales dollars.

So, yes. Google's location APIs are tracking you unless you turn them off. In some cases, y'all may have to turn them off through Google Play rather than at the per-app level. But this is i small role of Google's overall business strategy to create a closed-source cyberspace effectually Android's open-source roots. The actual feature that probably caused the kerfuffle is itself part of a larger trend to assemble details about every aspect of your life, the improve to advertise and market information technology to companies willing to pay. Consider, after all, the value of having that McDonald's app on your smartphone to McDonald's (or any other company).

From automatic geotagging to facial recognition, the same companies that provide essential digital services build databases of your activities, travels, and life. Said data is and then vacuumed up and sold through tertiary parties with names like Acxiom with fiddling oversight and less accountability.