Google's Software is Malware and Malware in Mobile Devices
Originally posted by Rob Musial
The initial injustice of proprietary software often leads to further injustices: malicious functionalities.
The introduction of unjust techniques in nonfree software, such as back doors, DRM, tethering, and others, has become ever more frequent. Nowadays, it is standard practice.
We at the GNU Project show examples of malware that has been introduced in a wide variety of products and dis-services people use everyday, and of companies that make use of these techniques.
Here are our latest additions
August 2025
- Google has announced the inclusion of a “security” measure in Android “smartphones,” which will require any software installed in certified Android devices to come from a developer who has gone through Google's new developer verification program.
The problem here is not that there's a system that provides trust on the origin of the software. A system like that might be useful, but the end user should still be able to select which organization provides that service, or maybe set up such an organization or renounce the service altogether.
Making this verification exclusive to Google makes us question which is the threat here. Is it a user installing malware inadvertently? Or is it the user installing software that makes Google lose money?
- Academic researchers have published an attack that led Google's supposed “intelligence” [*] to obey malicious commands to manipulate devices in the user's home.
Giving Google control of your devices, or control of your own computing that you do on their servers, inevitably makes you vulnerable to Google.
This announcement shows that the vulnerability includes third-party crackers [**] too.
The article says that the crack discoverers worked with Google to “mitigate“ the danger. What, concretely, does “mitigate“ mean here? Probably in this case it is a weasel word to suggest fixing a problem without claiming to have fixed it.
[*] Let's not call these systems “artificial intelligence.” Intelligence is something they do not have.
[**] Please note that the article wrongly refers to crackers as “hackers.”
July 2025
- Samsung disabled the option to unlock the bootloader in the new version of its proprietary Android distribution, making it impossible for users to install a third-party operating system on their mobile devices. This takes away people's right to run the system of their choice (which we hope is a free/libre system), and to extend the life of their device once Samsung stops supporting its software.
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