Google has linked Android’s wireless peer-to-peer file sharing tool Quick Share to Apple’s equivalent AirDrop.
Both tools allow users to share files, but until now only natively within their respective ecosystems. Quick Share therefore allows Android users to swap files or share them with ChromeOS devices. Air Drop allows users of iPhones, iPads, and Macs to share files.
On Thursday, announced a way to share files between Quick Share and Air Drop.
It only works on Google’s own Pixel 10 smartphone for now and the search and ads giant has pitched it as a means of sharing “personal files and content” among family and friends and argued that “Being able to communicate and connect with friends and family should be easy regardless of the phone they use” because “Technology should bring people closer together, not create walls.”
Easy comms, however, is a known problem for both Quick Share and AirDrop as both allow strangers to advertise files to share. Google relies on that, because it’s only possible to send files from Android to iOS if users of the latter enter “Everyone for 10 minutes” mode. As the name implies, that mode means iOS devices will advertise AirDrop as available to anyone for 10 minutes.
The potential for mischief if a bad actor sends dangerous files is obvious. Quick Share and AirDrop therefore both offer the chance to accept only requests from known contacts. Many businesses are so uncomfortable with both tools that they turn to mobile device management tools which can disable them.
Google is confident it’s securely linked Quick Share and AirDrop. A second blog post on the topic says it engaged independent security experts to assess its implementation and that they were impressed by what they found – especially Google’s use of Rust to write it.
Google’s post points out that Rust “eliminates entire classes of memory-safety vulnerabilities by design.” The Register can’t quite imagine a family gathering where that factoid would be raised to answer questions about the safety of cross-OS file sharing.
This feature only works on Google’s own Pixel 10 smartphones. The web giant often debuts Android features in its own handsets, and other manufacturers follow in due course.
Apple apparently had nothing to do with this. The iGiant has sometimes hardened its devices and operating systems against uses of its devices it deems unsuitable, such as when it added Do Not Track features that meant Facebook could not identify iOS users. That decision cost Meta billions in lost ad revenue. ®