Following the recent executive order from the US, Google has been forced to suspend business with Huawei.
The Chinese tech giant will no longer be able to license Google’s propriety operating system (but can use an OS based on Android Open Source Project) and other services that it offers. This means that users will no longer be able to use the OS in the future along with its apps and services on upcoming Huawei devices.
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Ending ties with such a giant contributor to the industry on the basis of an executive order from the President is absurd to say the least. While the US government has been trying to enforce a trade ban on China, blaming Huawei of something without proper evidence is biased.
As far as an executive order is concerned, it just goes on to show that the US government is willing to use underhanded and undemocratic tactics to hurt Chinese conglomerates from growing. Huawei claims to be a privately owned company and unless the US or the government can bring about evidence that it’s actually a Chinese government’s company built solely for spying, no one can reject Huawei’s claim.
Such a big deal breaker of a move requires at least some proper litigation or court order to be put in place along with some appropriate reasoning. It is an irrational move and clearly, there is a legitimate explanation due on the US’s part.
Secondly, Huawei has made substantial contributions towards the development and growth of Android and the smartphone industry. They have developed an ecosystem that has benefited both the users and the industry. It is the world’s second-biggest phone maker even though it emerged late into the competition.
The company has also spent billions of dollars on improving networks and mobile hardware which has ultimately helped the telecom industry grow.
Putting an executive order on such a major contributor means we are nullifying all that they have created and provided to the society at large.
Yes, this is a major blow for Huawei but this is nothing the company cannot take. Having grown so big and influential, Huawei is obviously not going to back down easily. In a way, this could be an opportunity for Huawei and other Chinese companies to fire back at Google by developing their own solutions and promoting the ecosystem of apps they already use in their Chinese market. This will make the competition even tougher for Google.
Huawei had been planning for this scenario for 6 years. The company says that it has already developed its own operating system as a plan B in case they ever got banned by the US.
Huawei and all other OEMs are required to pay royalties to Google for using their OS and Play services. By employing their own operating system in their phones, Huawei will be able to produce much cheaper phones.
Chinese vendors are already widely popular for making smartphones with cheaper price tags and this is an opportunity for Huawei to exploit that even further. This is actually a chance for them to explore possibilities of growing even further beyond.
Google and Facebook are already wildly infamous for their privacy scandals. Recently a web tool named “Purchases” was discovered in Google accounts. This web tool accurately puts together a list of all your online purchases and doesn’t let you delete them without deleting the email at the same time. So there’s no way for you to keep track of your online transactions without Google keeping tabs on it.
Facebook, on the other hand, has been up in its own controversy regarding the data breaches. Personal user data from millions of accounts being sold to third parties is not unfamiliar news to us anymore.
Point being that American companies are already guilty of spying into our personal data and hence it doesn’t make much sense of them to accuse the Chinese of it. Users have an opportunity to switch over to Chinese vendors instead as a better substitute compared to American companies.