Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

What Gemini should be able to do with WhatsApp:

    Exactly and only what any other random app on the phone could do
    with WhatsApp, assuming that you have enabled that in exactly the
    way you would have to enable any other random app to do it.

Google needs to not be abusing its position as the source of the OS to give its software special privilege to reach inside of third-party apps.

The line is blurry. Google is positioning Gemini not just as an app, but as a OS level feature. The OS can by definition reach into any third-app app to do anything it wants. I'll give some more examples of OS-level features in case it's not clear: copy/paste is an OS-level feature and it is designed to extract arbitrary text or content from third party apps (copy) and insert them into third party apps (paste); screenshotting is an OS-level feature and it is designed to capture the visible views of any third party app with the only exception being DRM content.

Apple Intelligence has similar marketing. In last year's WWDC, there was the whole "Siri, when is my mom's flight landing?" segment (see https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2024/101/ at 1h22m) that didn't generate any controversy. So for some reason people think Siri should rightfully be an OS-level feature but Gemini should not. Got it. I guess Apple's PR is just that much better than Google's.

This is the line of thinking that got Microsoft into trouble back in the day, and they were forced to split the web browser and the operating system.

However, operating system technology has come a long way since - the trick is to control not only the computer but the government.

Unfortunately the situation on Android is that other apps cannot do anything with WhatsApp, and there's fuck all you can do about it as a user.

I shouldn't need Google special-casing Gemini to allow LLMs to interact with my messages. I should be able to wire up Tasker to WhatsApp on one end, and to OpenAI or Anthropic models of my choice via API calls on the other end. Alas, Android is basically like iPhone now, just with more faux choice of vendors and less quality control.

Dear god! Are you sure? If I ever sensed a forkable event for Android...

The fact that Google would find it to be convenient for the line to be blurry doesn't mean that anybody looking at it in good faith sees the line as blurry.

> Google needs to not be abusing its position as the source of the OS to give its software special privilege to reach inside of third-party apps

Gemini uses the same APIs and permissions as any other Android app.

Well, really the line was crossed when Google Play Services got special privileges (and third party app developers were encouraged to call on Google Play Services as the only practical way to do various things, some of which maybe should have been part of the OS). And the "assistant" crap, and whatever else.

... and GraphenOS isn't exactly a fork, but it's plugging away, fighting the good fight, doing things like making Google Play Services both optional and a lot less privileged on the phone than it thinks it is.

But some people in good faith can see the line as blurry. Others perhaps not. It's subjective and opinion-based.

HN people just like to live in their own bubble thinking no other opinion is valid other than their own.

> Google needs to not be abusing its position as the source of the OS to give its software special privilege to reach inside of third-party apps.

There are some extremely useful features that you can implement with AI, but currently only at the OS level, not with normal app permissions-- namely live translation of audio streams that belong to another app (calls, video playback, etc.).

But I suppose you're still right; it would still be better if Android had an API for sharing app audio streams like this.

Siri does this, but the processing happens on-device so it stays private. Seems like a nice compromise.

Google has Gemma? So they could also blow Apple out of the water by competing directly there.

Its blurry because it was made blurry. It shouldn't be, and any laziness-inducing helper app or product ain't no excuse.

These are basic core (and so far immovable) privacy principles, lets not lose sight of this when we delve into whataboutism.

If you give users a way to compromise their own security, scammers will find a way to make users compromise themselves.

Devils advocate: Google Play Services was the right solution to all the clamoring about Android fragmentation and OEMs abandoning devices by not providing upgrades.

I agree that Google Play Services was the right solution to fragmentation. I also agree that having forks like GrapheneOS was the right solution for a subset of people who like to de-Google themselves.

> Google is positioning Gemini not just as an app, but as a OS level feature

Eeewww.

We need a mobile OS competitor.

I am seriously considering a move to Fairphone with /e/os.

GrapheneOS would be a possibility, but I don't trust Google to make decent hardware, so not super excited to get a Pixel phone.

Definitely helped with that and also absolutely frustrating that it is so abusable to keep folks out of the Android garden.

Undeniable that Android updates are so much better than in the past, and it's far easier to keep your Android app using modern APIs than your iOS app, because most of those APIs are libraries with full backwards compatibility going back many years.

This is trivial to verify. Just look at the permissions requested by the Google app like I did.

> Google is positioning Gemini not just as an app, but as a OS level feature.

That doesn't make it any better or more acceptable. If anything, it makes it much, much worse. I absolutely don't want any LLM to have OS level access to my data, period.

I definitely had to tweak the settings a lot for the battery to not get warm on my Pixel. But after a week I managed and battery life is better than with comparable phones since the background bloat isn't there on Graphene.

So far there was a solution for everything, I don't do online banking on the phone though.

I wonder if LineageOS might solve this problem already though, /e/os probably would as well

Google is an advertising company. Apple is a consumer hardware company. Who would you trust more with your data? It’s that simple (irrespective of the ground truth, simply referring to the optics of it).

Yes, but GrapheneOS has lost access to Pixel specific drivers/etc, with the repo changes Google made?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44256604

Google sells hardware and Apple sells ads, in great quantity in both cases. Not sure "it's that simple" at all.

Making OS level features depend on an external cloud service is a rather dubious proposition in general. It feels a bit anti-competitive to me, if nothing else.

Users always have a way to compromise their own security, and short of taking away their freedom completely (e.g. putting them in a mental hospital) that's not possible to fix.

Sacrificing human freedom in the name of security is a long, dark, and well-trodden path that I don't think we ought to venture down any further.

Apple is an advertising company.

https://ads.apple.com/

Generates billions for Apple and is growing rapidly, since they implemented increasingly aggressive "privacy features" to block their competitors.

> I definitely had to tweak the settings a lot for the battery to not get warm on my Pixel. But after a week I managed and battery life is better than with comparable phones since the background bloat isn't there on Graphene.

I am sure a detailed writeup will be very appreciated if you bother and manage.

What percentage of revenue do ads and hardware contribute to the bottom line in Apple and Google? That answer will tell you more about leadership incentives than just hand-waving away the discussion based on the fact that big tech companies tend to dip their toes in a lot of pools.

It's expanding, which is all that matters: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/19/apple-now-directly-sell...

The fact that someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they're operating in bad faith.

> We need a mobile OS competitor.

Mobian, PureOS, postmarketOS exist.

The line is not blurry at all. The line is what I define the line to be on the devices that I've paid for.

Yes, I have an older phone running LineageOS for that matter.

But those are typically community efforts, so software support is not certain. It sucks when so many things just expect you to have a working cell phone.

> The line is blurry. Google is positioning Gemini not just as an app, but as a OS level feature

The line is blurry, but Microsoft was positioning Internet Explorer as an OS level feature, too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...:

“Microsoft argued that the merging of Windows and IE was the result of innovation and competition, that the two were now the same product and inextricably linked, and that consumers were receiving the benefits of IE for free.”

Apple somewhat similarly argued that the iOS App Store is an OS level feature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Apple#Background:

“Apple has further argued that it requires iOS apps to use its storefront to "ensure that iOS apps meet Apple's high standards for privacy, security, content, and quality" and avoid exposing iOS users to risks from alternative storefronts.”

In both cases justice departments (the ones who draw those lines) disagreed with those claims.

All of you have joined an argument that is completely fictional. I am amazed that someone can still fall for “Apple is a hardware company” bait.

Both Google and Apple control enormous number of devices, the data on them (or data collected by them), their software, and their users. They make money by selling you tiny bit of access to that, directly or indirectly. End of story. Should I remind you how much being special to privacy restrictions costs Facebook?

Apple has an advertising business. That’s materially different from having advertising as your core revenue stream.

Likewise, Google has a consumer electronics business, but they’re not a consumer electronics company.

It does when it that person is taking a charitable view of anything Google has done since about 2011.

At first I thought the fact the advertising-and-tracking company needed access to their competitor's encrypted messenger was related to the tracking that is their core business model.

But it's unfair to assume bad faith like that.

Perhaps they merely need access to the encrypted messages in order to provide a better user experience, by serving more relevant and better personalised adverts?

I'd be more interested to know what would happen to Google if it turned out they were reading all of our WhatsApp messages.

If that's a slap on the wrist, then we can be sure that Google is doing it.

What company will jump in the competition meat grinder between Google and Apple. Maybe if it’s state-sponsored. I don’t know how much HarmonyOS/Huawei are state-sponsored so I can’t claim there are.

Even given all of the historical abuses of Google on Android you still believe an app permission is acting in good faith when Google has hooks elsewhere into the OS?

Google has already been successfully sued this year in CA for siphoning off data from phones that are idle and the remainder of states is in process [0].

[0] https://www.androidauthority.com/google-314-million-verdict-...

Punkt has a phonen using a fork of grapheneos out of switzerland with some cloud services like VPN attached to make it a completely degoogled 'secure phone', called ApostrophyOS

https://mc02.punkt.ch/en/mc02-5g-secure-phone/

https://www.apostrophy.ch/

Can't vouche for it, I just use a flip phone.

> What company will jump in the competition meat grinder between Google and Apple

Purism did. My Librem 5 works remarkably well given how small the company is.

I'm not going to argue there's any bar too low for Google to not clear, but also, it really is possible that it's just for the stupid AI feature they say it is. Just because it's something Google could feasibly do doesn't mean they will. I'm very confident they have never used Google Public DNS for advertising or tracking.

It's one thing to treat funneling data "to the cloud" with suspicion out of principle, but personally I think it's counterproductive to go a step further and just assume everything is always being maximally abused. The fact that it could be is an issue, but that doesn't mean it is.

How do you deal with things such as mobile banking? So many services just presume you use either an Android or IOS.

At some point I thought I really needed Android Auto, but I can probably just get a MStick only for that. There are other things that keep me jailed to Android though.

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

That lawsuit was for using metered cell data not for "siphoning off data." You can look at the Android source code and verify that the Gemini app cannot bypass the permission system. This is unlike iOS, where Apple apps get special access.

So if Google is to learn from others’ past mistakes, it ought to be able to leverage Gemini as long as the user can easily and fully swap out Gemini for an alternative. That was the problem regulators had with IE and the App Store.

to get an overview of the degoogled phone market: http://customromhardware.miraheze.org/

>Siri does this, but the processing happens on-device

It happens on-device where possible.

"Although Apple attempts to do as much as possible on device, certain features require real-time input from Apple servers." Source: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/01/our-longstanding-priv...

> How do you deal with things such as mobile banking

One way is to have a spare Android phone sitting at home with no sim-card. Also many (not all) banking apps work with Waydroid. The best way is to switch your bank to one not forcing the duopoly on you.

Implementing their own service as an OS-level feature is a peculiar decision when the EU's DMA would force Google to allow competitors to have the same capabilities.

Google already violates the DMA in some minor ways (like how Chromebook clipboard sync can alter the clipboard in the background, but tools like KDE Connect and Microsoft's My Phone cannot).

On the other hand, the default "assistant" app is one the user can pick freely in the settings so if whatever API WhatsApp exposes is also usable for Bixby/Bing/Claude/ChatGPT, I imagine things would fit the phone just fine.

As for Siri, I think Apple customers just don't really care about Apple gatekeeping apps like these. For some reason, they seem to like Siri (even though I can't get it to do basic things for me, it's somehow even worse than Gemini) and for some reason they trust Apple to access their personal information, so there's no need for controversy.

WhatsApp has been forced by the EU to provide access to third parties. If there's any app that third party apps can interact with, it's WhatsApp.

I also can't really find the mechanism at use here. I don't know if WhatsApp is exposing some kind of dedicated assistant API that an alternative assistant (the one you can pick in the settings) might be able to use.

Google Gemini shares a namespace with system-level components. You can't just take the APK and check the permissions in it to verify Google's access, you'd also need to go through Play Services, AI Core, and all the other auxiliary Android components to be sure.

Without details on how Gemini is interacting with WhatsApp, it's hard to say if Google is privileged or not. It's possible Facebook just struck a deal with Google.

I'll need to check again. Maybe it's my rusty Android skills, but last time I checked (circa a year ago), I got the impression it's going out of its way to stay fully opaque from the outside.

It's also notoriously the one popular app that intentionally doesn't offer any kind of API access for normal users - it only has one to allow companies to automate advertising bots.

That may mean they're stupid but it still doesn't constitute bad faith. Do you know what "bad faith" means in this context?

> Google needs to not be abusing its position as the source of the OS to give its software special privilege to reach inside of third-party apps.

good luck. why do you think they bothered to create an OS in the first place? like, what did you think a data mining company would create an OS for?

billions of dollars means it is a core revenue stream

One from Europe is the most likely contender. The disdain for USA corporations is growing abroad. Could even see Canada and Mexico moving to such entities when a solution is viable.

I have been investing in possible startup organizations. We need it!

And that’s exactly what the ancestor comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502286) argued.

Bad faith typically encompasses willful blindness and deliberate ignorance. There’s a reason why courts can equate not knowing something when you should have and chose not to, with actually knowing it.

Take advertising away from both. Which one would crumble vs contend with a few worse than expected quarters.

Google is something like 75% ad revenue, <5% hardware.

Apple is something like 75% hardware, <5% ad revenue.

> irrespective of the ground truth, simply referring to the optics of it

I thought I was being clear when I said that. My comment was referring to the general perception among masses.

Google's reputation is further tainted by a certain sneakiness. Like being caught using private data for AI training - despite people opting out of it. All because of cleverly worded legal language that allowed other Google subsidiaries unfettered access.[1]

[1]: Google Can Train Search AI With Web Content After AI Opt-Out https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-03/google-ca...