The fact that Android staff later fixed the bug in 4.4.2 implies you are wrong.

The carrier is not the customer in Google's market. The advertiser is. I thought that was pretty clear. The carrier merely delivers product.

Is it "fixing a bug" or "removing a feature that is causing product shrinkage"?

Do you want the official answer or the paranoid answer?

The problem with all these extreme explanations is that all the evidence here is not evidence. It's just one irate carrier employee mouthing off on Google's bug forum. This should be obvious, but a gmail.com email address != android.com email address.

Is this really "google" considering it so? The poster identifies themselves as working for a carrier, not google.

Quote from that email:

> IS NOT A BUG. IT IS A FEATURE. It's not a feature for users like you and me, it's a feature for manufacturers like Samsung and HTC, so they can in turn build devices that carriers can have more control over.

The reason why I switched to Android was precisely the control I have with it, with the primary annoyance I experienced with iOS being that the carrier has to give approval for tethering (amongst other bullshit precisely like this one). This happens for Windows Phone too. Was pleased with Android precisely because it's the only OS in which the feature cannot be turned on/off by the career. Apparently this is no longer true.

A bug BY DESIGN is still a bug.

UPDATED: corrected sentence, iOS is not a carrier :-)

You do realize the person you quoted isn't a Google employee or someone working on Android at all, right? That was just from some random joe schmoe.

Nobody from @android.com or @google.com has commented on the bug at all.

And you do still have control, you are free to compile AOSP for a handful of supported devices directly, and you are free to use CM or whatever. Well, except CM has this bug/feature, too.

> iOS being the carrier that has to give approval for tethering

What do you mean by that?

You quoted the post out of context. They were saying they experienced that with iOS devices the carrier was the only one who could enabled tethering while with android devices that was not always the case.

Although the carrier can still block tethering regardless of whether the device purports to let you use it.

No they can't. Devices can have apps on them, apps can have the same usage pattern as your laptop.

It wouldn't work even if they did deep packet inspection, like reading the browser's headers or things like that, because then it would break in-app functionality for apps that allow you to fake your connection to make the server respond as if you were a desktop (also thinking about browsers).

I don't think telcos are all that fussed about the minority of people who use faking apps compared with the amount of money they can sting people for by charging extra to allow tethering. UK telcos certainly manage to block tethering when you've not paid for it - or even when you have paid for it but exceeded your monthly allowance.

> even when you have paid for it but exceeded your monthly allowance

Is this monthly allowance specific for tethering only?

Otherwise that's another problem entirely. Restrictions after exceeding the monthly allowance is OK, after all that's what you're paying for. But if I'm paying for 1 GB per month of data, then I expect to use 1 GB of data unrestricted because I'm paying for it.

And if that 1 GB of data comes with a fine print, then shouldn't consumer laws come into play, at least in the EU?

In Romania, a local career was fined for false advertising a while back because they were promising 600 free minutes, while at the same time the indivisible billing unit was 6 or 10 minutes (instead of per second after the first minute, as everybody else was doing it). Wouldn't such laws work for data too?

Yeah - I have "unlimited" data (I'm averaging about 8GB/month) but only 1GB a month of allowed tethering. Once I go over that 1GB, it stops working until the next billing cycle - other telcos do things like cut the bandwidth to a trickle or only allow it off-peak.

Consumer laws about fine print appear to have no teeth when it comes to UK mobile telcos (who e.g. are legally allowed to advertise 1GB a month as "unlimited")

even so, that problem is just as easily worked around with a browser extension to mimic mobile browser user agent or headers. Granted that could result in our receiving content formatted for a mobile browser but im sure someone could work around that. Also if the site is designed responsively which I believe is the best practice (I think user agent sniffing is discouraged) then this won't be an issue.

Given how much money is at stake, I don't think the telcos are daft enough to let simple faked headers defeat their tethering detection systems.

If they can detect it. If the user is sensible, they can't.

It's a literal quote of a part of the comment, I simply don't understand how iOS could be a carrier in any context.

I see where the confusion started... bad_user was mis-quoted...

"iOS being that the carrier has to give approval for tethering"

I wasn't - made a spelling, later corrected it.

Thanks for the fix. Interesting how asking a simple question can get you downvoted into the basement these days.

I'm guessing what he meant was:

the primary annoyance I experienced with iOS being [that] the carrier that has to give approval for tethering

Ah good one. Thank you, that fits.

Just because you aren't the customer doesn't mean you are the product. Google's customers are BOTH end users AND carriers.

You're the product being sold here, but you pay GBP 600 for an Android flagship phone, and more if you need a contract.

I actually find it refreshing - at least they're honest about it. And I'm sure you can find a ROM without it.

iOS, Windows Phone, Blackberry OS -- they all flag and honor carrier tethering usage allowances. Therefore, by this simplistic logic, to all of them you are the product?

I doubt Google's intentions are quite as simple. It's entirely possible that they're honoring the "carrier code" to ensure competition is robust. If your carrier has a problem with tethered data, get a different carrier.

As an aside, it's pretty bizarre to see a comment by some random person (the "IT'S A FEATURE NOT A BUG!") being used as if it's a statement by Google. Bizarre.

Android is a product which is used by carriers to produce phones. They ARE the customer. If you don't agree with the choices your carrier made with their distribution of android, you have alternate options like Cyanogenmod.