Google 'blocks Huawei access to Android updates' after blacklisting

[Guest Indiana]

Google has suspended business with Huawei that requires the transfer of hardware and software products except those covered by open source licenses, a source has told Reuters.

The news is a blow to the Chinese technology company that the US government has sought to blacklist around the world.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/19/google-huawei-trump-blacklist-report

[Guest Indiana]

Huawei has become famous in Latin America for selling devices less pricey than Samsung. 

I personally used one Huawei brand cellphone,  but had to return it. Even sending an email was a difficult task. 😕

[JW Insider]

On 5/19/2019 at 6:42 PM, Indiana said:

The news is a blow to the Chinese technology company that the US government has sought to blacklist around the world.

Google's companies (and now Amazon, too) are US military contractors and must therefore follow US interests. Google even helped to delist and blacklist videos that were going viral about the Huawei phones, so that the originals have often now been re-posted, but with many fewer views. My introduction to the phone was this video showing an amazing 50x zoom that no US phone can come close to yet.

There are also videos showing an amazing ability to "see in the dark" which is a major weakness of iPhones and Google phones.

Of course, all this posturing against the Chinese phone can backfire into seeing the iPhone banned in China.

Similarly, the fact that China has rolled out so much true 5G is going to make it hard for US companies to claim that they were the 5G pioneers who had it first. There has been a partial blackout in the US of a lot of Chinese technology. To reduce interest and international competition, the USA once simply relied on the claim that China only "steals" US and Western technology, but this doesn't make a lot of sense when some of these amazing technologies in China have already surpassed US technologies by several years. (quantum computing, AI supercomputers, etc.) 

[TrueTomHarley]

On 5/22/2019 at 11:19 PM, JW Insider said:

To reduce interest and international competition, the USA once simply relied on the claim that China only "steals" US and Western technology,

I hear this so often from businesses themselves, not just the government, that I accept it as true. That doesn’t mean that, having done so, they might not use whatever intellectual property they have hijacked to build upon.

I also think it will be a difficult point to negotiate away. If what I know about communism is true, there is no private intellectual property, nor private property of any sort. The property of one person is in theory the property of all.

[TrueTomHarley]

On 5/22/2019 at 11:19 PM, JW Insider said:

Similarly, the fact that China has rolled out so much true 5G is going to make it hard for US companies to claim that they were the 5G pioneers 

It may be just as well. The same people who carry on about chemical & pharmaceutical & food pollution also carry on about 5G, far more intense than 4G, and impossible to get away from.

Watch those Chinese to see if they light up.

[JW Insider]

2 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

If what I know about communism is true, there is no private intellectual property, nor private property of any sort. The property of one person is in theory the property of all.

From what I've been learning in the last couple of years, almost nothing I "knew" about communism was true.

The international financial services company I worked for (for a quarter century) wanted to open up services in China. Negotiations included a 10 year opportunity to see what kind of market share our company could build with no government encroachment, except for limits on officer salaries and profits leaving the country. But after 10 years, there would be rules about the number of Chinese employees at "officer" decision-making levels, and a kind of democratic vote by all employees about profit levels, profit sharing, etc. There were rules about not just pulling out and leaving Chinese customers without financial guarantees. If any of these rules were broken the Chinese government would prepare to take over and incorporate customers into state provided financial services or Chinese institutions which already abided by those rules.

[JW Insider]

4 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I hear this so often from businesses themselves, not just the government, that I accept it as true.

Almost unrelated but my wife's aunt is in the hospital and that aunt's daughter, my wife's cousin, is a registered nurse who was there with us last night. As we were all visiting, this cousin railed against the fact that the Chinese are manufacturing so many of our standard pharmaceuticals that they administer, and another nurse on duty was agreeing whole-heartedly about poison levels and lead levels in all these Chinese medicines. She gave the name of a few of these medicines, so I started looking them up, and it turned out that quality statistics were more problematic (and lethal) when these same medicines were USA manufactured.

it reminded me that major US media outlets including CNN and the NYT apparently feel obligated to run an anti-China story every few days. One recent one that got some traction was a story on how China had banned a cartoon called "Peppa the Pig." Even late-night comedians made fun of how terrible it was that China had banned the innocuous cartoon as promoting gangsterism, etc. There were dozens of major newspapers that picked up the story on Chinese censorship. Some had ominous overtones of impending danger to the Chinese people if not the entire world. 

Think it's funny that China is cracking down on Peppa Pig? Think again

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/07/china-cracking-down-on-peppa-pig

But, in the meantime, people were noticing that not only had a recent Peppa the Pig video gotten a BILLION views in China, but even the Chinese army was marching in Peppa the Pig formations to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/02/05/691501906/why-its-the-year-of-peppa-pig-in-china?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20190205

The supposedly ominous crackdown turned out to be about as true as the 5,000 news articles published in the US about Assad (Syria) using poison gas on his own people, etc., etc., that, through leaked documents, we now know that the US government didn't believe at all, over the several years that they were still promoting these articles as true.

[TrueTomHarley]

2 hours ago, JW Insider said:

She gave the name of a few of these medicines, so I started looking them up, and it turned out that quality statistics were more problematic (and lethal) when these same medicines were USA manufactured.

Hmmm. Is the lesson here to run like mad when the nurse comes with meds because they may be made in China...

or to run like double-mad because they may not?

FD: I am not a fan of too many meds, having had not so good experiences:

https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2017/04/should-pharma-be-expected-to-cut-its-own-throat.html

[Guest Indiana]

Huawei Wants to Play Nice With Google and Microsoft, But Has Its 'Last Resort' Ready

Huawei is an electronics powerhouse that has relied on partnerships with Google and Microsoft to help boost its global business. But the Chinese company must now face the possibility of a future without its American partners.

Microsoft removed Huawei laptops from its online store on Friday, marking the latest move against Huawei after it was blacklisted on May 15 by the U.S. Department of Commerce over security concerns. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment.

“I think Huawei’s removal from the Microsoft Store portends to the future where Huawei, already kicked out of the U.S. in phones, spreads to its very high quality PCs,” says Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. Huawei’s existing business requires it to “rely on U.S. companies in the short and mid-term,” he added.

The company also relies on several American semiconductor companies, including Qualcomm, Intel, Nvidia, and Lattice, along with British-American chip maker ARM, to supply parts to build its smartphones and laptops. Some of those chip makers have reportedly stopped supplying Huawei, but none of them have confirmed it.

“It will take a decade for China to replace these capabilities,” says Moorhead.

Google briefly pulled Huawei’s Android license on Sunday, but restored it on Tuesday after the Trump administration issued a temporary order to allow operations to continue for existing Huawei mobile users.

Without the license, Huawei wouldn’t be able to sell smartphones with Google’s services, including Maps, Gmail, and Google Assistant, essentially forcing the company to come up with their own back-up plan or risk losing market share. Huawei laptops use Microsoft Windows, however Microsoft hasn’t commented on whether it plans to pull Huawei’s license to use Windows on future products.

http://fortune.com/2019/05/25/huawei-google-microsoft/

[Mic Drop]