I remember getting my first Android phone and feeling a sense of empowerment. This Google-branded rectangle put the world at my fingertips. It did what I wanted and then got out of my way. It made life easier and more convenient.
Now despite boasting bigger batteries, faster processors, and higher-resolution cameras, our phones make us feel powerless; as if we must fight our devices to get anything done. There’s a constant barrage of notifications, and by the time you have dealt with them, chances are you have forgotten what you wanted to do in the first place. Then there is Gemini, Google’s artificial intelligence bot, which won’t leave you alone. Press the home (middle) button for half a second too long, and it pops up, offering to “assist” you.
What was once a useful tool has now become an instrument of torture, designed to extract as much money from consumers as possible. And to keep it that way, Google is quietly locking away its phones’ source code to make it as hard as possible for people to build better alternatives. While Google awaits the repercussions of being convicted of running an illegal search monopoly, the tech giant may have inflicted far greater harm on people through its control of Android than it has by monopolizing online search or advertising.
Things were not always so bad.
Android, the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, started life as open-source software. Anybody could look at the underlying code, modify it, and freely share it with others. This was great because it allowed people to choose what was best for them.
Let’s say you don’t like Google constantly spying on you and selling your data to advertisers. You could try installing LineageOS, which is an open-source,…
Auteur: Jairaj Devadiga
