Google chief Sundar Pichai has reportedly said they will be willing to work with Apple on more and more projects. This statement was quoted in a Wired interview, where he even mentioned that “Tim and I decided to exchange notes and speak directly.” The first-ever collaboration between Google and Apple was announced last when both the technology giants decided to come up with a contract tracing solution for mobile. This was later renamed to exposure notification and recently rolled out by Apple with its iOS 13.5 version for iPhone users.
And it seems like their first partnership has been quite fruitful, which has prompted Pichai to admit about future collaborated projects in public.“Big companies that work together to serve society are really good for the world. I am open to working with Apple on finding other opportunities, and I had the same feeling as Tim about this, he was quoted saying.
In addition to this, Pichai also shared details about how this partnership became possible and what was done to make the platform interoperable.“Both teams, independently, had started working on technology to support health agencies in their contact tracking work. Both sides quickly realized that for this to work well, it has to be available everywhere. So the Android and iOS engineering teams began to reach out organically.”
It’s also likely that Google and Apple had to team up for the platform, meant for the entire, since both Android and iOS till date have been unable to work through each other’s ecosystem. And to make the tracing platform effective, both these companies had no option, and as Pichai states, had to exchange notes with one another.
The COVID-19 mobile platform is yet to make its way to Android. Still, it’s worth pointing out the service which works devoid of access to location data will not work in India, as Indian government has already got the Aarogya Setu App with over 100 million users onboard via Android and iOS devices.