After writing several blog posts about Google lately for allowing criminals to advertise on their website, scraping competitor’s databases and violating the company’s own rules about advertising, I thought I’d take a break from Google for a while.
Then I read that Google is beefing up security for Android to prevent malware from getting into the market. Okay. You’d think I’d have some nice things to say about that, but unfortunately (as an Android user) it just annoyed me.
It’s not that I’m against them beefing up security—I’m all for it—I’m just a little exasperated with how Google has run Android in general. And I’m exasperated how it has affected me personally as an Android user.
I’ve written several posts on the problems I’ve had with Android over the last year and a half or so. Just me personally, I’ve experienced so many niggly little problems (and am still experiencing, honestly—it seems like something new every day) that I’m pretty fed up.
Basically, the Android Market is a mess, in my opinion. The apps just don’t work well with the phones, not the way they’re supposed to. And the problem comes down to a fragmented Android ecosystem with no centralized (i.e., Google) control.
To me, the way Google runs the Android Market has always been bush league. In a nutshell, they don’t run the market, they just let it try to run itself like a bunch of teenagers whose parents have left the country.
So now Google has created Bouncer, a program that will scan apps before they’re offered on the Android Market. Well, all I can say to that is—how come this wasn’t the case all along?
According to Forbes, Google’s approach to security on this has been reactive instead of proactive, which I totally agree with.
Google allows apps to “download and execute new code,” which is a problem because malware can hide in the new code. They don’t prescreen the app developers they allow to post to the Android Market—they do a real-time scan as the app is uploaded.
The iPhone app market is so much more secure than the Android Market. And while I’m all for beefed up security and will give Google props for taking this new security step, I just can’t help being annoyed. And you know what else I can’t? I can’t wait to get an iPhone.
