Huawei Is Building a Search Engine. Here’s Why We Should All Care.

Let me ‘Huawei’ that for you.

As you may very well know, the US government “blacklisted” Huawei in May last year. This act prohibited the sale of US goods to the Chinese smartphone giant.

Huawei’s smartphones run on the Android OS, owned by famous US company Alphabet, and Huawei devices depended on access to Google Mobile Services for maps, search, and many other capabilities.

Android, which has a staggering 87% share of the mobile OS market, is supposed to be the open-source alternative to Apple’s iOS. However, there are different versions of the Android operating system.

For the purposes of this peppy article, we’ll keep it brief.

Basically, Google keeps all the good stuff for its ring-fenced version of Android, while the open-source version is much more limited.

The blacklist move means Google can’t work with Huawei, although it would certainly like to continue their relationship. Huawei phones no longer have the Google Play Store or Google apps, which has a knock-on effect. Uber depends on Google Maps, for example, and many Android phones automatically back up their files on Google Drive.