We tested ... "/ e /", the "disgooglized" Android mobile operating system

It is a curious name for a white knight of digital freedoms that of “/e/”.Especially for a software which has such a broad ambition: to be installed at the heart of our smartphones, exactly like Android, the most popular of operating systems.Functional since June 2019,/e/also uses the basics of Android, taking care to drive out Google applications and services.

According to the/e/manifesto, Google “uses our personal and professional data to feed [its] business and possibly to routinely spy on people.” In fact, Google lives off the advertisements that it targets on the basis of users thanks to the rich information that she draws from their smartphones and computers.

Is it even possible to build an Android without Google? The American company is not the creator of Android, but it bought it back in 2005, in a version that was certainly not very successful, but stuffed with pieces of free software, therefore public, modifiable, reusable by anyone."This forced Google to maintain the free license of Android, even though they improved the software from year to year", specifies Gaël Duval, the Frenchman who runs the foundation/e/and the company of the same name, employing around thirty -five full-time equivalents.

For an informed public

But there is also an opaque part inside Android's guts, which is owned by Google, and one can hardly do without the services it provides - notifications, updates, mapping, online storage, app store, etc.The ambition of/e/is to replace it, which is a huge challenge, so we tested the/e/operating system to see if it was livable on a daily basis, keeping in mind Gaël Duval's warning, “/e/is intended for an informed public, I fear the deceptive effect on the general public”.

Posted Date: 2020-11-28