Google Chrome will see greater expansion on mobile devices

Google Chrome will see greater expansion on mobile devices

By Rachel King.

Summary: Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome and Apps at Google, talks up the dual strategies of Android and Chrome, but don't expect the two platforms to merge anytime soon.

SAN FRANCISCO - The mobile web is in its infancy, according to Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome and Apps at Google, adding that this market will flourish over the next three to five years.

Pichai sat down for a chat during the closing keynote discussion of the 2012 Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference on Thursday afternoon.

See also: Groupon CEO: 'We've cracked the code'

For critics who would ask what is there left to innovate with a browser, Pichai retorted that even though browsers have been around for 15 years, if you make the experience better, people will respond.

There are roughly 200 million Chrome users worldwide, and while Chrome is primarily a desktop experience as part of Google's dual strategy (Chrome and Android), it's starting to make its way on to mobile devices.

Last week, Google released a beta version of Chrome for Android for mobile devices running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).

Pichai noted that the "future of Chrome" is pushing the platform across smartphones and tablets. Part of the motivation for pushing Chrome to tablets, in particular, is how much more people use the browser on these devices.

"Users expect a seamless, integrated experience across devices," Pichai asserted, explaining the necessity (and opportunity) to ensure Chrome's presence and continuity across Google's products, from the desktop to mobile devices to Google TV.

The underpinnings to Chrome relies on two things: cloud-based apps and the browser that makes these things work.

Although the Chrome App Store is "in its early days," according to Pichai, he boasted about its success thus far given that install rates have tripled over the last three months, and there are approximately one million downloads in this space each day.

Pichai didn't offer many specifics about where the Chrome App Store will go from here, but he did note that we'll be seeing many more gaming and productivity apps released in the near future.

As far as productivity goes, Pichai pointed towards both Chrome and Google Apps, cloud computing products that are becoming much more popular with businesses trying to wrangle with the bring-your-own-device to work trend.

Businesses want something "that will scale across all this: a cloud-based solution that supports multiple endpoints," Pichai argued. "That changes the value of Apps significantly."

But as for any kind of pressure about merging the Android and Chrome platforms into a single unit, Pichai remained mum.

"We don't know. We will always do the right thing by users," Pichai said. "People use them differently, and we want to address them differently for today."

Apple tweaks apps policy under lawmaker pressure

By Gerry Shih.

(Reuters) - Under pressure from U.S. legislators, Apple Inc moved Wednesday to quell a swelling privacy controversy by saying that it will begin to require iPhone and iPad apps to seek "explicit approval" in separate user prompts before accessing users' address book data.

Apple's move came shortly after two members of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce committee requested the company to provide more information about its privacy policies. Bloggers, in recent days, have published findings that some of the most popular software applications in Apple's App Store have been able to lift private address book data without user consent.

"Apps that collect or transmit a user's contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines," an Apple spokesman told Reuters. "We're working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release."

In a letter addressed to Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, Representatives Henry Waxman of California and G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina, both Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, asked Apple earlier on Wednesday to clarify its developer guidelines and the measures taken by the company to screen apps sold on its App Store.

The letter came after Path, a San Francisco startup that makes a Facebook-like social networking app, attracted widespread criticism last week after a Singaporean developer discovered that Path's iPhone app had been quietly uploading his contacts' names and phone numbers onto Path's servers.

In the following days, other technology bloggers discovered that iPhone apps like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Foodspotting similarly uploaded user data -- without permission, in some cases.

The Path incident "raises questions about whether Apple's iOS app developer policies and practices may fall short when it comes to protecting the information of iPhone users and their contacts," the letter said.

The legislators' request for information cast the spotlight squarely onto Apple for the first time since an independent blogger, Dustin Curtis, wrote in a widely distributed post last week that "there's a quiet understanding among many iOS app developers that it is acceptable to send a user's entire address book, without their permission to remote servers and then store it for future reference."

Curtis blamed Apple, writing that he could not "think of a rational reason for why Apple has not placed any protections on Address Book in iOS."

In their letter to Apple, Waxman and Butterfield, referenced Curtis' blog post, adding: "There could be some truth to these claims."

The legislators had asked Apple to submit its response by February 29.

 

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Google's Bouncer For Android Shows Malware Apps the Door

Google's Bouncer For Android Shows Malware Apps the Door

By Kate Freeman, VIA:mashable.com.

Bouncer scanning software, developed by Google, is designed to search the Android market for software that could be malicious, the company announced Thursday on its blog.

With the success of Android this year, the company says it wants to protect its many users and their devices from harm.

"Device activations grew 250% year-on-year, and the total number of app downloads from Android Market topped 11 billion," Hiroshi Lockheimer, VP of engineering, wrote on the Google Mobile Blog. "As the platform continues to grow, we're focused on bringing you the best new features and innovations - including in security."

Bouncer will scan current and new applications, plus developer accounts. The blog post explained how the service will function.

"Here's how it works: once an application is uploaded, the service immediately starts analyzing it for known malware, spyware and trojans. It also looks for behaviors that indicate an application might be misbehaving, and compares it against previously analyzed apps to detect possible red flags. We actually run every application on Google's cloud infrastructure and simulate how it will run on an Android device to look for hidden, malicious behavior. We also analyze new developer accounts to help prevent malicious and repeat-offending developers from coming back."

Bouncer was tested in 2011 and comparing the first half of the year to the second, Google Mobile reported a 40% decrease in malicious downloads.

Google says from the beginning, Android was designed with security in mind. And, although a company can't prevent malware, it can control the amount of damage those threats can cause with a dynamic security plan.

Some of Android's core security features are:

Sandboxing: The Android platform uses a technique called "sandboxing" to put virtual walls between applications and other software on the device. So, if you download a malicious application, it can't access data on other parts of your phone and its potential harm is drastically limited.

Permissions: Android provides a permission system to help you understand the capabilities of the apps you install, and manage your own preferences. That way, if you see a game unnecessarily requests permission to send SMS, for example, you don't need to install it.

Malware removal: Android is designed to prevent malware from modifying the platform or hiding from you, so it can be easily removed if your device is affected. Android Market also has the capability of remotely removing malware from your phone or tablet, if required.

Google's long been fine-tuning its security features for its various products. Although in the past Google's products have clashed with that of other mobile service providers due to security concerns.

Are you an Android user? What do you think about Bouncer? Tell us in the comments.

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Devs, start your compilers: Peek offers free/cheap devices to hackers

BY MICHAEL CRIDE.

If there's one thing the Android development community can't resist, it's a cheap mod platform. The Nook Color and (eventually) the HP TouchPad both owe their legacies to budget-conscious Android users looking for something to mod. The latest platform for cheap hacking might just be the Peek, a single-function device built for SMS on the cheap. The company is going out of business, but The Verge reports that CEO Amol Sarva wants to give the thousands of unsold units to hackers, hoping that "maybe somebody can build something great". At least one member of the Reddit Android section has the idea of porting Android to the device - a familiar rallying cry.

For those who are unfamiliar with Peek: it's a small BlackBerry-style gadget that's built for text messaging and email, and nothing else. The single-purpose Peek was sold for less than $100 and used cheap service without contracts as a hook for those who needed to stay connected without the use of a phone. The hardware is pretty bare-bones, but includes a full QWERTY keyboard, GSM connection, side-mounted scroll wheel and 2.5-inch 320 x 240 display - not that much smaller than a lot of cheap Android phones, though it's unfortunately not touch-enabled. Peek worked with a variety of email services, including POP3, IMAP and Exchange.

Can any of the Peek devices run Android? It's hard to say. Getting the hardware itself to boot a different operating system wouldn't be that difficult, but according to the Wikipedia page, the Peek's processor is a mere 100mHz and the storage space is a measly 8 megabytes. It would be a challenge for even the most talented Android ROM developer to get Android to fit on the device, to say nothing of it running properly. The Peek has no expandable storage, so getting it to hold more data would require some hardware modifications. Still, if anyone can do it, Android modders can.

 

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