Normal Google has the same NSA required back doors -- all American based softwares have them since the Windows 3.1 era.

Chinese tablets have software and hardware back doors, as China requires access much the same as our NSA does.

People slam at Google for actually SAYING this out loud, that if you compute over the internet you have NO REAL EXPECTATION of privacy.   Google knows what is built into their OS at NSA's governmental requirements, and they had the balls to say so out loud.   Bill Gates had enough balls and he said the same thing back in the day when it all first started.

If you don't like this, go get you some Sailfish or Firefox OS -- and I bet it will still have SOMEBODY's required back door stuck in it in it that NSA will find quickly enough.

Hell, what do you want to bet that the ARM chip designs don't have British back door requirements built right into the design?

All government and police want to see inside your device, and they can also tap into all the internet nodes under their control as well.

Brittan has cameras on light poles EVERYWHERE -- it is the most invasive, security ridden western culture I have seen so far.  

And ARM is British.

Now that Rockstar Bidco (a 32 person shell company, a specially created patent troll sock puppet company created by Microsoft, Apple and Blackberry) has sued ol' Google and is seeking a "cease and desist order" on all current Android OS shipments, do you think that having Mozilla Foundation's Firefox OS out there with NO entanglements with Google AT ALL, using only open source Linux code is a pretty durn good idea?

Are you surprised that the open source community has some extra strings for their bows, knowing just how nasty Apple and Microsoft really really are?  

That nobody saw this coming?

Lawsuits like this generally take about 2-3 years to totally settle out, unless they get tossed out immediately by the sitting judge.   So, this next 2-3 years is a critical period as the smart phone market will grow abruptly to QUADRUPLE OR BETTER IN SIZE during this short short period of time.

You got 3 players out there that WILL NOT BE AFFECTED by the Google/Rockstar Bidco Lawsuit.  These are Firefox, Sailfish and Tisen.   You got players already positioned to custom fork out their own Android flavors based out of NON-USA based companies and countries.  

Samsung is one (but they are named in the Google/Rockstar Bidco Lawsuit as co-offenders already).

You will hear more about the pure Linux phones as open source swings additional effort over to make them the very next latest greatest & best phone/tablet OS out there.   This will happen ASAP if Android really does get tripped up by the Rockstar Bidco sock puppet in court.

Expect to get yourself some negative feedback, you Rockstar Bidco creating jerks.   Microsoft has "no-sue" agreements in place with Samsung and others and having a 32 person shell company sue somebody for you, Microsoft,  is a very thin legal line to hide behind.  

Samsung should sue Microsoft for breach of contract, to recover all the money paid to Microsoft in that no-sue agreement.

Samsung rolls Tizen forward with a "finishing" developer phone



So, go sue Android all you want Apple/Microsoft/Blackberry, we will just roll our stuff over into a full open source phone based out of a NON-USA company that you CAN'T sue without suing the entire open source world.  

And the court you will get judged in has already ruled on people attacking open source for specious reasons -- it jest ain't a gonna happen.