Google's mismanagement of the Android Market
Earlier this week, CNET ran an article critical of the permission model of the Android Market. Google's response to the criticism was that “each Android app must get users' permission to access sensitive information”.
Context & Ripple Effects
Android Market governance had already been tested by a 2009 dispute over the consequences of an open app store. The present criticism shifts the focus from whether Google permits contentious apps to whether its permission prompts give users meaningful control over the data those apps request.
CNET’s critique lands alongside a report that roughly 20% of 48,000 marketplace apps allowed third-party access to sensitive or private information. Google’s response makes user approval, rather than pre-publication screening, the central safeguard.
First-order effects
- Google’s defense ties Android Market trust to users’ ability to understand and reject sensitive-access requests before installing an app.
- Android developers seeking sensitive permissions face greater scrutiny because their requested access is the mechanism Google cites as user protection.
Second-order effects
- The Android Market faces sharper pressure to show that an open distribution model can provide intelligible consent, not merely disclose technical access at installation.
- Google’s June use of its Android kill switch against botnet demonstration apps underscores that the company already combines user permissions with post-distribution intervention, complicating a purely user-choice-based defense.
Third-order effects
- If permission prompts remain the principal control, app-store governance will increasingly turn on whether disclosure produces informed consent rather than on whether a store is open or closed.
- The episode points toward governance as a condition of marketplace access: platform operators may need to define what permissions and review practices are adequate for software handling sensitive information.
The trend: Mobile app stores are moving from open-distribution debates toward accountability for the consent and enforcement systems that govern access to user data.