A big win for Android interoperability
openhomefoundation.org170 points by soheilpro 2 days ago
170 points by soheilpro 2 days ago
The monopoly/gatekeeping effect of an OS developer making apps that compete with independent apps has such an easy solution. The OS must not give private api's or special permissions to its in-house apps. Don't try to fight the gatekeeping feature by feature, that is whack-a-mole.
Bonus points if you require the primary UI (window manager in the language of the ancients) to be an installable app.
I don't care about any of these, I just want to be able to have whatever Google pay does without Google.
You could claim that's not an android problem but if you do I don't think you've ever had to explain to people your phone doesn't have a Google Play store.
We had that for many years. But banks stopped supporting their own payment solutions because despite not having to pay commission to Google, it was more expensive to support their own solutions.
That should also tell you that almost any open source / non-profit solution is doomed to fail due to costs. What could work is if, just like the UnifiedAttestation initiative has commercial backing, Wero is expanded to also have its own NFC payment stack. The EU already forced Apple to open up NFC, so it is possible to do it for both iOS and Android.
Would it be possible to build something that works at the os level? And is built in the system itself instead of depending on google services ? I mean I don’t think it requires internet access all the time
Walt https://walt.is/ is building exactly that in Europe. They claim first tap to pay will happen later this year.
Some European banks including mine offer NFC payments via their app as well. You don't need Google services.
Why would anyone who cares enough about security/privacy to run a de-googled phone want to use a tap to pay app?
People use alternatives for many different reasons (or multiple at the same time):
- They might want privacy from Google. Using Google Pay probably doesn't make much sense.
- Security protection against Google. Google can remotely brick devices with unsandboxed Play Services. After blocking of ICC officials and all the Greenland threats, it's not odd that some European citizens would like to block this Google/US government attack vector.
- They want a clean phone without all kinds of crap like Gemini preinstalled.
- They want to reduce dependence on big tech/Google product in general.
In cases 2-4, using Google Pay with sandboxed Google Play services may be an acceptable compromise for convenience.
Minor note, you forgot battery life. Pinging your location every other minute for traffic and crowd denisty for Google Maps, even using AGPS, isn't cheap.
When you find battery life randomly tanks for a few days, despite not changing anything in your life, it's always Google Play Services that end up being the culprit
Great point! For me that was not a reason to get a phone with GrapheneOS, but definitely a noticeable/welcome side-effect.
Is this an AI response? I get why people want a de-googled phone. What I don't get is why they would want to use tap to pay, one of the payment methods with increased attack vectors.
> with increased attack vectors.
I don't follow. If you mean against fraudulent spending phone based tap to pay is probably the most secure. It demands user authentication (biometric or code) for any transaction so there's no real way to trigger a fraudulent spend without the user knowing. Pretty much any other system allows for at least some amount of unauthorized spending if it's stolen.
If you just mean it's less private than I don't really know that it's terribly different than using a card. Especially if the ecosystem were open and you could choose your payment provider and not just have to use Google/apple.
Is this an AI response?
No.
I hate AI writing, so I never use AI for writing. Randomly throwing in accusations in discussions sucks. I don't think my comment had any of the hallmarks of AI writing either, unless bulleted lists are also not-done these days.
I guess I should be happy that people don't recognize me as a non-native speaker anymore?
Because people have different priorities than you do, and just because you can't imagine something, it doesn't mean it's not real or reasonable.
Without Google doesn't mean the same thing for everyone. I got a Motorola g moto stylus 2025 and have been running an experiment for almost a year now in which I use this device without ever logging into the device with a Google account. Fdroid and obtainium work flawlessly. Aurora Store works for the most part but some apps won't even let me open them without a play store signed in account which is sad.
Well it's going to be a matter of time anyway, I'm already forced to use an app when I'd rather not.
But more than that I want to have a choice.
Because it’s convenient?
I agree, it's very convenient to have a phone full of corporate malware. But I thought the point of GrapheneOS was to escape that. My corporate malware only runs on my secure card processor which sits in a pocket glued to my phone.
But I thought the point of GrapheneOS was to escape that.
I think the point of GrapheneOS is being as secure as possible first and within those parameters give people the choice how much of Google they want. They have implemented sandboxed Google Play Services for a reason. Many people need Play Services for practical reasons (e.g. because they need to run apps that require it), so let's then run it in the most secure/private way possible - make it a sandboxed app, allowing users to decide whether to install it or not and if they choose to, that they can assign/revoke permissions like any other Android app.
The very moment it becomes possible to create a Google Pay alternative, there will be at least a dozen choices, some of them fully open source and privacy conserving.
The only reason why we don’t have them is Google / Apple duopoly.
I seriously doubt that. There used to be more NFC payment apps, but most banks abandoned them since it was cheaper to just pay Google their cut through Google Pay. Or Wallet, or whatever the hell they renamed it to.
Banks letting an open source project run transactions through them... that's... hilarious.
It's possible right now, but you have to (as Google did) convince all banks, merchants, and card networks to let them use your system.
You're begging the question. The entire premise of this thread is "we should be able to pay without infesting our phone with corporate malware".
Well yes, but attacking Graphene for that is attacking the wrong layer. If you want an open payments system the government has to mandate it, or you could take the low chance of success with the free market competition method.
IMO the most annoying thing is that Google could solve this problem today by just adding the GrapheneOS signing keys to the whitelisted keys. Instead they decide to exclude GrapheneOS because security, while attesting phones that are still on Android 13 (multiple years without fixes for vulnerabilities that are not marked high/critical) and did not apply ASB patches for up to 12 months.
A first step would be requiring Google to attest all devices that have a locked bootloader, verified boot, signed with non-public keys, and have a recent Android version and patch level.
IMO they should also boot anything older than Android 16 and behind more than 1-2 ASBs, if security is the real reason to have Play Integrity remote attestation.
POSIWID: the purpose of remote attestation is to force people to buy devices that pay Google license fees.