How a handful of employees at Apple quickly pushed forward the development of a contract tracing API and collaboration with Google in less than a month
- Apple and Google announced a partnership to bring contact tracing to smartphones on April 10th. Their software toolkit will be released on Friday.
CNBCChristina Farr
Context & Ripple Effects
The joint Apple-Google effort announced on April 10 promised iOS and Android contact-tracing APIs by mid-May — an unusually fast timeline for two companies whose platforms rarely interoperate. This CNBC report explains how that timeline was met: a handful of Apple employees drove the API development to completion in under a month.
The speed matters because the toolkit ships Friday, ahead of schedule, just days after Apple and Google published an [[a:952996|FAQ detailing privacy changes and a pledge to disable the APIs once the pandemic is contained]]. The collaboration has moved from announcement to shippable software in three weeks.
First-order effects
Health authorities gain access to the Bluetooth-based exposure-notification API this week, restricted per the companies' earlier confirmation that only public-health agencies can use it.
The mid-May target set when the partnership was announced is effectively beaten, giving app developers less lead time but states an earlier start on exposure-notification apps.
Second-order effects
Android reach depends on Google Play delivery to devices running Android 6+ rather than full OS updates, while iOS users need iOS 13 — pressuring both companies' update pipelines and forcing older-device owners toward upgrades to participate.
Public-health agencies now face compressed procurement cycles: they must stand up compliant apps against an API spec written by two private companies, with no alternative cross-platform option available.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, Apple and Google become de facto gatekeepers of public-health digital infrastructure — deciding who may access the API and, per their FAQ pledge, when it gets switched off, a governance role normally held by governments.
The time-boxed, sunset-promised API sets a template for emergency platform interventions: rapid small-team development, restricted access, and explicit expiration — a structure regulators will likely scrutinize as contact tracing scales.
The trend: Mobile operating-system vendors are becoming direct suppliers of public-health infrastructure, with API access rules and sunset terms set by Apple and Google rather than health authorities.
For weeks, I've been working on this inside look at how Apple and Google - historic rivals - came together for the contact tracing. The codenames were “Bubble” (Apple) & “Apollo” (Google). What amazed me was how just a few employees pushed this forward: https://www.cnbc.com/...
“But I would not in a 100 years have predicted this: U.S. tech companies provide a privacy-preserving framework to do digital contact tracing, and some European countries are lobbying them to lower the standards.” https://www.cnbc.com/...
“That speed of development was highly unusual for Apple, a company obsessed with making its products perfect before releasing them to the world. Project Bubble also required that Apple join forces with its historic rival, Google, to co-develop technology”. 👇👇 https://twitter.com/…
This story by @chrissyfarr reminded me what drew me to tech and the Valley in the first place: the ability of groups of people to will incredibly useful things into being. https://www.cnbc.com/...
The tango of Google and Apple for proximity tracing, with a touch of Swissness in its DNA - feat. @ebugnion, #EPFL VP for Information Systems https://www.cnbc.com/... via @CNBC @EPFL_en @EPFL @ICepfl @FredericJacobs @marcelsalathe @gannimo
“To ensure user privacy, [Apple/ Google] lifted ideas from ... open-source efforts like MIT's PACT and Europe's #DP3T. Google ... was ... inspired by the work of DP-3T ... [which] “gives the best privacy preserving aspects of the contacts tracing service.” https://www.cnbc.com/..…
Here's the detailed inside story of how the Apple-Google contact tracing cooperation happened — it was spurred by a small group and came together very quickly on the Apple side. Exclusive inside info from @chrissyfarr https://www.cnbc.com/...
“The letter also mentions a thorough analysis of centralized and decentralized implementations of contact-tracing protocols. It includes multiple attack scenarios and undermines both the DP-3T protocol as well as ROBERT” https://techcrunch.com/...