Google have no choice but to comply with US law. This is now going to make a load of existing US owned (Huawei manufactured) devices less secure unless an exemption is agreed for things like software security updates.
Not only that, the ban encourages a long term move away from US-based tech as alternatives are needed within China. This new tech will ultimately be available worldwide, but no longer owned or controlled by US companies.
As someone from neither China or US, it seems crazy. It’s one thing to ban Huawei from your own markets for security concerns, but by making such a heavy handed ban on working with them, the US government seem to be making the US less secure short term, but also US companies will be less competitive and less influential in the world long term.
> the ban encourages a long term move away from US-based tech as alternatives are needed within China.
China blocked Google play years ago and repeatedly blocks every attempt Google tries to make to relaunch back into china [0] so they did that a long time ago.
Like they have no choice with tax laws. Or no choice with cartel laws. Or no choice with data protection laws.
They are agressively trying to circumvent many laws all the times to extend their monopoly and grow their profits. They have multi-billion fines from the EU and several member states pending and no somewhat critical thinking citizen would claim that EU has been particularly tough on their monopoly and tax evasions.
American-manufactured devices are probably equally as infiltrated by American foreign intelligence services. Hence why they don't just use a standard Linux distro with open source firmware.
Even if it was true that American phone companies are infiltrated by American intelligence services, you have to ask yourself which government you trust more. As a New Zealander, I think there are very good reasons to trust the US government a lot more.
Heck, if you look at where Chinese officials try to stash their money and their families, it's clear they trust Western countries a lot more too.
> As a New Zealander, I think there are very good reasons to trust the US government a lot more.
As an EU citizen, idk, China seems more locally focused, the U.S reaches everywhere. Speaking of NZ, the whole Kim Dotcom situation makes it look like a U.S.vassal state, honestly.
Hardly, look at what the Chinese are doing in Africa and the "Silk Road" initiative and how they load down countries with borrowing so they can come in and clean up 10 years later.
US government spying has nothing to do with why manufacturers don’t “just use a standard Linux distro with open source firmware”. There are no GNU/Linux (as in, with the GNU userland) distros that work well enough on phones to compete with Android and open source firmware removes some competitive advantage around things like image processing.
I'd hardly presume Huawei is a front for a foreign intelligence service, but their software for cellular basestations is extremely vulnerable (hundreds of different vulnerable versions of OpenSSL sprinkled through) and they still can't be bothered to use version control, despite committing to address both issues back in 2012: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-huawei-bri...
Huawei's products are vulnerable by default, anyone can look up the applicable CVEs and run the proof of concept code for said CVE to pop a shell. China doesn't have exclusive access :)
No, I think it is, that would explain a lot of things - like how can they make/sell premium mobile phones for less? If the Chinese govt is paying you (say) $100/user to plant a back door, that would certainly help.
Remember that Huawei settled out of court to the 'allegation' that they copied Cisco's source code.
No. Although Huawei did do some shady shit, like come up with a bonus scheme based on how much IP/market intelligence their employees could "acquire" from their competitors.
Well, OS updates weren't going through the play store anyway, no? And it appears you'll continue to be able to download app updates via the play store "But users of existing Huawei devices who have access to the Google Play Store will still be able to download app updates provided by Google.".
