Comment on EU considers tariffs on digital services Big Tech
486@lemmy.world 2 days agoHow about not letting Google have exclusive rights to the drivers for all the phone hardware?
What exactly do you mean by that? Google is one of the few companies that let you easily unlock their phones so you can do whatever you want with them.
The_Caretaker@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Unlock so you can use whatever phone service provider you want but Google controls the Android operating system. If you don’t want Android on your phone and would rather use Linux or another FOSS operating system, it’s very difficult, because Google doesn’t give up control of the drivers for a lot of phones. If you just want to remove Google apps from a phone that comes with Android, you have to jailbreak it which voids the warranty and jailbreaking can’t be done to every phone.
486@lemmy.world 2 days ago
No, unlock as in: You can install whatever operating system you want. No need for “jailbreaking” on Google phones. They officially support unlocking the bootloader (and re-locking it later as well!). There are many things not to like about Google, but how they handle their phones when it comes to openness is certainly not one of them. Pretty much all other phone vendors are much worse than that (except for maybe a few small ones like Fairphone).
The_Caretaker@lemm.ee 2 days ago
You are talking about phones made by Google. I am talking about ALL the phones using Android and how difficult or sometimes impossible it is to use anything but Android. I am talking about (oranges) a monopoly on phone operating systems. And you are saying what great (apples) phones Google produces.
486@lemmy.world 2 days ago
That’s not what you were saying. You were explicitly talking about Google. Also, implying it is Google’s fault that other manufacturers don’t let you install other operating systems easily is pretty bizarre. If you want to complain about that, at least complain about the right companies. Those are usually the phone manufacturers and/or the SoC manufacturers. The SoC manufacturers often times are particularily problematic, since they often do not publish open source drivers at all or in a very limited fashion.