Behind the scenes about the story of Apple and Google collaborating to confront Corona

For years, traditional contact tracing has been used to slow the spread of epidemics. When the responsible authorities hear about an infected person, they communicate with him to find out his whereabouts and who may have contacted him, then officials track these people and subject them to examination or social isolation, and with the outbreak Corona Virus New, governments have turned to digital tracking through smartphones to help track and slow the spread of the coronavirus without the need to employ a huge number of people to track the infected and those who have had contact with them because the smartphone includes various technologies that can be used to locate its owner and other phones close to it, and Singapore was one of The first countries to resort to early contact tracing through the phone's Bluetooth signal, which has a range of 30 feet, to see if there are two phones near each other, as strong signals indicate that the two people were very close while weak signals mean that they were far away and thus not exposed. To be injured.

The Bubble Project

However, there was a problem with that method that it violated users' privacy and this is what Myoung Cha, responsible for Apple's health strategic initiatives, felt, who was already working with a small team of company employees specialized in location services and privacy on a voluntary basis, to explore ways to use smartphones for Search for contacts and the project is then named Bubble.

After a while, the project was given the green light by two key executives, the Director of Systems Engineering Craig Federighi And director of the operations department Jeff Williams Within weeks there were a dozen Apple employees working hard on the bubble project.

The idea of ​​the Apple Bubble Project is to use Bluetooth to track the proximity of phones without detailed location data, such as the Singapore application method, but in a way that does not need to run applications all the time. Apple employees also wanted a decentralized method through which the person’s phone who tested positive would send quick, direct and anonymous notifications. The source is for other phones that were close to it instead of building a database that includes detailed information about users. Apple's team also saw that users need to agree to share information with other phones first, as Apple wanted to ensure the highest level of privacy.

The Apollo Project

At the same time and by a happy coincidence, a group of Google employees who work in privacy and Bluetooth connectivity, headed by Yul Kwon, a senior Google manager and formerly responsible for the privacy section of the social network Facebook, were working on the same idea in a project called Apollo, and they got The green light by Dave Burke, responsible for Google's Android system engineering department.

The two traditional rivals cooperated

No one thought the two traditional rivals would cooperate, it was Steve Jobs The founder of Apple is convinced that the Android system has been designed to mimic the iPhone system, and the two companies have a long history of court battles and bitter competition when it comes to smartphones, and although they coexist peacefully, they are still strong competitors with two dominant smartphone platforms in the world.

However, they knew that they had to work together or else it would fail, which is why the two projects got the green light from their CEOs, as Tim Cook and Sander Pichai conducted an online video meeting several days before the official announcement of the project on April XNUMX. There are some difficulties and gaps that face the implementation of their method, such as the existence of communication between phones that operate on different operating systems, and this is why the two companies intend to allow smartphones operating with the Android and IOS system to communicate with each other by passing certain codes or codes when they are in a close range, and then those codes can be tracked. And knowing the status of each user accurately.

Finally, Google and Apple intend to launch the application programming interface in May, as this interface will ensure that iPhone and Android applications are able to track users regardless of the operating system they use, and the work of the programming interface will be limited to specific applications of health agencies and institutions participating in the project.

Project evolution

Indeed, Apple has released a beta version of its development package, and we have talked about it in an article (Alert for contacts of Corona virus cases and face print bypass in iOS 13.5And Google is also working on its beta version, and now governments have to exploit these programming interfaces to create applications that use Apple and Google technologies, without these applications there will be no benefit from the project, and there is news that some countries such as Germany are already working on their own application and through it the designated body will be able Whoever reports whether or not the owner of this device is infected with the virus, and the role of the Google and Apple software package is to alert those approaching this device that there is a close person carrying the virus without mentioning or identifying it.

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