Governments can’t force their citizens to use technology built by Apple and Google for tracking and mitigating the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus, senior company representatives said on Monday.
Apple and Google, normally arch-rivals, announced on Friday that they teamed up to build technology that enables public health agencies to write contact-tracing apps. The partnership is being closely watched: The two Silicon Valley giants are responsible for the two dominant mobile operating systems globally, iOS and Android, which together run almost 100% of smartphones sold, according to data from Statcounter.