Wednesday I mentioned Dan Gillmor's observation about Apple's "centrally controlled computing ecosystem". Of course, Apple isn't the first to do this sort of thing. Microsoft wants to know when you swap out a motherboard, which is none of their business. Amazon has shown that it can yank books from the Kindle, by — ironically — yanking copies of 1984 and Animal Farm. Techno-illiterate and chair of the Senate Homeland Security committee Joe Lieberman wants to install a "kill switch" on the Internet. Oh, and create a new bureaucracy for his committee to oversee budgets and appointments.
Now Google joins the parade. It appears Google has built the ability to yank an application into its telephone OS, Android.
But Android is based on Linux. How long before someone writes a "kill switch killer"? And if someone did, would you put it on your phone?