Mozilla lashes out at Android and iOS

Andreas Gal, chief technology officer at Mozilla, argues that Android and iOS do not provide the user with sufficient transparency, partly due to the use of proprietary software. According to Gal, Firefox OS can counter that.

In an interview with The Guardian, Gal says that a user of an Android or iOS smartphone cannot check how the operating system handles, among other things, privacy-sensitive data. The Mozilla cto claims this is due to the lack of transparency caused by the proprietary nature of both operating systems. In the case of Android, he refers to the various Google apps that are not open source, but are installed by default on most mobile phones.

As an example of the closedness of the Android platform, Gal cites the riot surrounding the Disconnect app. This application allows the user to deny apps access to certain functions, but Google pulled Disconnect from the Play Store twice. Furthermore, Apple would deliberately refuse many innovative apps in its App Store.

According to Gal, Firefox OS, a mobile operating system based entirely on HTML5 technology, does give the user transparency. For example, the operating system offers an option to revoke individual permissions per app. Until now, there are hardly any smartphones available on the western market with Mozilla’s mobile operating system. Moreover, these are cheap devices whose functionality is more limited than that of smartphones that run on Android or iOS.