How Google Introduces An AI-Bloatware Era Through The Supposedly Stock Android

Android, Gemini

Android is an open-source operating system for mobile devices, as well as a corresponding open-source project led by Google.

Years ago, before the launch of the first Pixel, Google’s phones were the go-to option for those who wish to experience stock Android. The Nexus series gained popularity among tech enthusiasts by offering an experience free from additional features, apps, and functionality imposed by device manufacturers or wireless carriers.

Using Android Open Source Project (AOSP), the phones provided the pure, bare bone, vanilla Android.

Fast forward, the Pixel series, which in 2024 is in its ninth generation, is far from a stock experience.

Google has made AOSP a bloatware.

And people can thank AI for that.

Android, Gemini

The AI field was dull, until Large-Language Models disrupted it.

When OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, the company quickly created an arms race, where other tech companies began competing to either adopt the OpenAI product, or create new ones as competitors. And Google is one of the latter.

With Gemini, Google prepares a post-search engine future, where Google Search only may longer be relevant.

And here, Google that has been busy adding generative AI features to its various products, has once again reached another milestone, when it's embedding Gemini directly into the Android operating system, starting on the Pixel 9 series.

Through its Pixel 9 series, Google is like preparing Android to have Google's Large-Language Model-powered voice assistant pre-installed on every smartphone.

And not just that, because through the Pixel 9 series, Google is also introducing Gemini features in a bunch of pre-installed apps, like the Screenshots and Pixel Studio.

While the attempt shows Google's vision of what Android 'should' be, by featuring bespoke functionality, visual customization, and additional apps, adding pre-installed AI-powered apps and features means that all users must have them by default, even when they don't need them.

And because Google has been adding Gemini to a lot of its apps, the many Google apps Android has by default, offer similar features.

This create redundancy.

What's more, sticking to the Android tradition, pre-installed apps, especially that come from Google, cannot be uninstalled through normal means.

Users can only disable them, and remove them.

Android, Gemini

In the past Android phones other than Pixel devices often came with a lot of bloatware due to a combination of factors involving manufacturers, carriers, and business strategies.

But with the AI trend, and with the so many Google apps that have the same features that cannot be uninstalled, Google is creating a new era of bloatware, right into AOSP.

Long story short, starting the Pixel 9 series, Pixel no longer represent AOSP the way it used to be.

Google wants these AI apps present because Google wants people to use them.

After all, Google has been investing a lot of time and efforts, and that generative AI was a "code red" that worried even its CEO.

So having generative AI pre-installed on every Android phone, is undoubtedly one of the most obvious things Google can do to ensure its longevity in the post-search future.

Published: 
28/08/2024