Using blackmail and extortion to 'bastardise' Android

Summary: LG and Sony (of Rockstar Consortium) follow Samsung and Dell in Microsoft's campaign to turn Android into 'Microsoft Android' using patents-induced pressure/leverage

THERE is an effort by Microsoft to hijack Android and turn it into a Microsoft platform. Cyanogen is a key Trojan horse in this effort (an embrace extend and extinguish manoeuvre by a Microsoft proxy), but then there are Microsoft-occupied companies like Dell and patent partners like Samsung (patent extortion and lawsuits played a role in this too) which agree to replace Android software with Microsoft spyware. Samsung is now thinking about a Windows-Android mix [1], having learned nothing from Nokia's Microsoft-inflicted demise. Venture Beat has this disturbing news. Having spent several years bragging about the number of companies Microsoft bullied into Android 'patent deals', Microsoft now starts bragging about the number of companies Microsoft bullied into Android 'Microsoft deals' (which relates to the former because the Taiwanese press says Microsoft offers patent concessions in exchange for installation/bundling of Microsoft spyware). This is extortion, plain and simple. It's based on patent litigation threats and bribes. As Venture Beat puts it: "The news follows Microsoft’s announcement in March that it had gotten Samsung, Dell, and several regional hardware makers to sell Android devices packed with those same Microsoft apps."

It's just Microsoft's patent ally LG and also Sony, which works together with Microsoft when it comes to patents (recall Rockstar). The rest are mostly obscure 'partners'. "In total," says the article, "Microsoft has now partnered with 31 global and local OEMs (11 in March and 20 today) to preinstall its apps onto Android devices throughout this year. Only time will tell if Microsoft’s apps end up actually being used more because of these deals."

The number, 31, sure sounds high, but in reality, only a handful of these have got significant market share. Microsoft is exaggerating here. It's marketing or even shameless propaganda. A small payment to some of these small companies (a bribe) would be sufficient towards artificial inflation of the number.

Microsoft, an NSA partner, hopes to turn Android into more of a spying platform than it already was, harvesting audio using Cortana, which Microsoft re-announces this week.

"Having spent several years bragging about the number of companies Microsoft bullied into Android 'patent deals', Microsoft now starts bragging about the number of companies Microsoft bullied into Android 'Microsoft deals' (which relates to the former because the Taiwanese press says Microsoft offers patent concessions in exchange for installation/bundling of Microsoft spyware)."Incidentally, Richard Stallman very recently warned about Android as well as Windows. They are both "malware" according to him. Well, one learns something new every day. This news site says Stallman created Linux, despite him making it quite clear that it all started with GNU [2] almost a decade earlier. Most sites got it right [3-8], responding to his original article (published in The Guardian a couple of days ago).

The article which dubs Stallman "Linux creator" says "Richard Stallman, known for his instrumental role in the creation of Linux, has written an opinion piece arguing that nearly any operating system you might use today can be considered malware, and that goes for popular mobile platforms as well as desktop operating systems."

Later on it states: "The solution, he said, is to reject software and web services that snoop or track, to support the development of free software that doesn’t track the user, and to design legislation that would criminalize all of these new forms of “malware.”"

Microsoft boosting sites don't agree with Stallman but at least they give his views a mention [1, 2]. It is getting hard to ignore Google's own privacy violations and even its patents on privacy-infringing things, such as this latest example from the news [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] (widely referred to as "creepy"). Nevertheless, giving Microsoft control of Android, especially using an obscene bunch of moves and criminal extortion, is not OK.

Microsoft is attacking Android from other angles too, including the FUD angle. A Microsoft-bribed firm, , which said Windows will have become dominant in mobile by 2015, bashes Android again. It also praises Windows. To quote IDG (parent company of IDC reporting on IDC without disclosure): "Windows Phone will remain at about 3.2% market share in 2015, shipping nearly 47 million phones, IDC said. Those numbers will increase to 5.4% in 2019, when Windows Phone will surpass 103 million smartphones shipped, IDC predicted." Well, there is a lie there about Windows Phone because it's actually at around 2%, based on some respectable sources. Any predications of huge Windows growth from IDC were previously laughable and utterly wrong now that we look back. Perhaps it's not surprising that IDC needs IDG (its parent company) to spread out such nonsensical propaganda. Microsoft's attacks on Android are becoming more gross by the day. Defending Android is not a case of defending Google but a matter of defending truth and opposing Microsoft's criminality. ⬆



Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Samsung proposes an Android phone that transforms into a Windows laptop

   Samsung has been thinking up new ways to transform smartphones into laptops. In a patent application filed last week, first spotted by Patently Mobile, Samsung describes a mobile device that runs Android and is able to switch over to Windows when inserted into a dock. Individually, these ideas aren't new — dual-OS devices and docking smartphones have been tried a number of times over the past several years — but they haven't been put together in a particularly straightforward way. Of course, this is only a patent application, so there's no guarantee that Samsung will actually make it.





2. Richard Stallman Says He Created GNU, Which Is Called Often Linux

   Richard Stallman is the President of the Free Software Foundation and also the founder of GNU or GNU's Not Unix! operating system that contains only free software. One of his constant claims is that GNU/Linux is a misnomer and that it shouldn't be used. In fact, he's now saying that the GNU operating system is often called Linux.







3. Windows and OS X are malware, claims Richard Stallman

   'Resist gratification', says super-GNU-man freedom fighter





4. Linux Creator Says Windows, OS X, iOS and Android Are All Malware





5. GNU Creator Labels Windows And OS X As Malware, Trashes IoT Movement

6. Are Windows and OS X malware?

7. Richard Stallman labels Windows and iOS as malware

8. Richard Stallman: Windows OS is malware