Chinese manufactures claims Apple copied the iPhone 6 design - suspends sales in China

In case you forgot all about the nasty Apple vs Samsung cases of years ago, here's a new case to remind us of those times where the notion of how different a rectangle of plastic/glass/metal would need to be to be safe from such claims - but this time it's Apple that's accused of copying its iPhone design.

Chinese Android smartphone comes with malware preinstalled

If you thought it was annoying enough to buy a smartphone that comes with a set of pre-installed apps you can't (easily) remove - what if you found out it had pre-installed malware as well? That's precisely what seems to be happening with a cheap Chinese smartphone you can easily get online.

Android VP leaves Google for Xiaomi in China

You may have not hear of Hugo Barra before, but he's one of the few in Google's "high-ranks", and was Android VP. Now, he's about to head halfway across the world and join the ranks of Xiaomi, one of the largest (or the largest) smartphone manufacturers in China - also as VP.

It's still to early to figure out what this means for Android. Xiaomi already has their MIUI operating system - that is based on the open-source Android. Hiring Barra may mean that they either intend to get closer to the standard Android (which I think is unlikely), or - much more likely - intend to use his expertise and experience to further enhance and evolve their own system.

But there's also another small tidbit of info that might have something to do with Hugo Barra leaving Google... Apparently Sergey Brin is no longer with his wife Anne Wojcicki, and is in a relationship with a Google co-worker that has previously been involved with Hugo Barra. Some say that Barra's exit has nothing to do with this... but one can't stop wonder: if NSA's agents have been spying on their love interests, what would you do if you had access to anyone's Gmail account at will? Maybe Barra is indeed better off going to China and work on improving a NSA/Google-resistant mobile OS.

Google stops operating in China

The big news today is: Google has ceased to operate in China.

Behind this decision, that many are assuming to be an anti-censorship milestone (I remind you Google.cn was forced to filter out content deemed "inappropriate" by the Chinese government; for which Google was heavily criticized) there are a lot of worrying issues: Google claims there have been a high number of cyber attacks to its infrastructure, theft of important source code, and worst of all - that several user accounts have been systematically violated. Accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

In the stock market, the results were immediate, showing this isn't a "cheap" decision for Google.

However, this a major opportunity to force China to review their "Great Firewall of China" and this can very well be a day to remember.

Have you imagined if this is the first step that will make China change its stance to the world? That would certainly give an all new meaning to "the Internet changed the world"!


P.S. - And, probably thanks to this, Gmail now has https secure access enabled by default.