OREANDA-NEWS. Users of mobile applications Kaspersky Internet Security and Yandex for the Android operating system (owned by Google) have been complaining about the disappearance of some functions for several months, and a corresponding Russian correspondent found comments on Google Play. Yandex users write about the impossibility to use the “Automatic Caller ID” service built into the application, and Kaspersky Internet Security doesn't write about the “Call Filter” feature that allows you to block calls from certain phone numbers. Official representatives of Yandex and Kaspersky Lab on pages on Google Play in response to complaints from users claim that the problem arose "due to restrictions imposed by Google".

“At the end of 2018, Google announced changes to the Android policy, and now only the voice assistant installed on the system by default or an application for which this is the main functionality can have access to the call information and caller's phone number. In order for the user to work with the caller ID in the Yandex application, he now needs to install Alice, which is part of the application, as the default voice assistant”, a Yandex spokesman said.

“Google is moving in the direction of tighter controls and follows the“trend” of data privacy. This is one of the ways to dismantle garbage, which is a lot on Google Play, and to protect users”, agreed Maxim Bachinsky, head of the Android Instinct development department at Touch Instinct. Developers are not the first to face Google’s harsh Android policy, but they can only be affected by government. In 2015, Yandex appealed to the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service with a statement against Google about the abuse of dominant market position. This happened after Google banned the pre-installation of Yandex services on Fly, Explay and Prestigio mobile devices running on Android.