Google Ditches Android Market, Rebrands its Content as Google Play. Exclusive: Google Launches Style Guide for Android Developers. LAS VEGAS — Matias Duarte is a man who loves a challenge.
It’s part of why he took his current job at Google, leading the Android operating system team as head of user experience. In a nutshell, he is the man tasked with making sure Android looks, feels, and performs as smoothly as possible. And it is not an easy job. “Designing an open mobile operating system — and doing it really well — that’s never happened before in human history,” Duarte tells me, leaning forward in his chair and sipping from a cup of tea as we spoke in the garish hallway of a hotel on the Vegas strip earlier this week.
He is visibly excited, seemingly up to the task when I note how big the challenge is. Logistically speaking, his new gig is a nightmare. Duarte wants to remedy this. In theory, it will help developers better understand just how the Android team thinks about layout and implementation, while simultaneously giving suggestions to interaction designers on how to maintain visual integrity. Google Android Welcomes Windows Phone Competition. BARCELONA: Android is on a tear.
It has now has, according to Google's Mobile and Digital Content division lead Andy Rubin, 300 million activations, with 850,000 new Android devices coming on line each day. There are now at least 1,000 different Android devices in market and 450,000 apps in the Android Marketplace. All impressive numbers, which put the open source mobile OS in a leadership position. Still Google is not afraid to look in its rearview mirror where, interestingly, Google likes what it sees. The company is well aware of Microsoft’s activities revolving around Windows Phone; a platform has just a fraction of Google Android adoption numbers. "Microsoft is one of the companies that we respect most in the world," Hugo Barra, director of product management with Android, told me as we sat above the bustling Android booth in Hall 8 of Mobile World Congress. How a Web Link Can Take Control of Your Phone.
A chilling demonstration to a small, packed room at the RSA security conference today showed how clicking a single bad Web link while using a phone running Google’s Android operating system could give an attacker full remote control of your phone.
Once George Kurtz and colleagues from security startup CrowdStrike were done, they could record phone calls, intercept text messages, and track the hacked phone’s location at all times. “What is ubiquitous, has a camera, a microphone, knows where you are at all times, is always on, and stores your sensitive information?” Asked Kurtz. “The smart phone is the ultimate spying tool.” Smart phones have been hacked before, but Kurtz said this was the first public demonstration of an end-to-end system able to wrest control of one remotely with just a single click on a Web link. Targeted attacks, designed to steal intellectual property or valuable information from corporations and their executives, have become relatively common in recent years.