From the new Android Autoto new smartwatches and Android TV, Google had a lot to announce during its keynote at yesterday's I/O conference. But alongside its big announcements, the company also shared some interesting statistics about the growth of the Android platform.
One interesting fact that was announced in the opening speech and that struck us because it was related to security was the issue of malware and Google's efforts for "security innovation" on the platform. Sundar Pichai, head of the Android development team, said: "Based on the data we see, less than half a percent of users are infected with any malware issues."
But what exactly did Sundar Pichai say?
Those who only heard the percentage and did not try to match it with a number, would find the fact extremely encouraging. But let's see what the numbers say. When we talk about a platform used by a billion users, the percentage of 0.5% translates to five million users. 5,000,000 people have been infected with malware.
Continuing, Pichai said that the company aims to offer security updates to Android devices through Google Play, in order to provide security to their users within a maximum of six weeks.
And that sounds pretty encouraging too until we think about the name all new vulnerabilities discovered by security researchers or malicious users have: ZeroDay.
Google should probably think much more seriously about Android security, unless the number of 5 million victims in front of 1 billion users is considered a justified number of collateral damage.
