Why Apple and Google came together? The story behind the development of the contact tracing API

Recently, Apple and Google announced that they will jointly develop a cross-platform contact tracing API. The latest report from foreign media CNBC has an in-depth report on how Google and Apple came together. Interestingly, this report also details Apple's progress in developing the technology.

The story behind the coming together of Apple and Google

"Contact tracing" is a term that has been gaining popularity in the tech industry lately. The reason is that Apple and Google are working together to use this technology, which aims to warn people of their potential risk of virus infection by using smartphone data to track the people they have come into close contact with. If you test positive for COVID-19, you can send a warning to everyone you have met in the past 14 days.

According to CNBC, VMWare's founding CTO Edouard Bugnion first briefed Apple's developer relations team on contact tracing and the need for a solution that balances privacy and usability. These needs were quickly learned by Myoung Cha, Apple's head of health strategic initiatives.

At this point, he was already working with a group on how smartphones could be used for contact tracing — a project internally codenamed “Bubble.” Other members of the early team included Ron HuangRon Huang, Apple’s head of software engineering for location and mobile technologies, and Dr. Guy “Bud Tribble,” Apple’s vice president of privacy.

The team was then joined by a "group of engineers who volunteered to work on the project," including cryptography experts Yannick Sierra and Frederic Jacobs.

The team favored a decentralized approach early on: The idea was that a phone from a user who tested positive could send anonymous alerts directly to other nearby phones, rather than uploading all that information to a government or other central agency.

Like Apple, Google was also considering a similar project internally. An early team consisting of senior product manager Ronald Ho was responsible for the project internally, and the project was code-named "Apollo". The team then submitted the project to Dave Burke, Google's vice president of Android. The latter eventually had a technical exchange with Apple's Myoung Cha, which paved the way for the cooperation between the two giants.

However, the cooperation plan can only be officially announced after obtaining the approval of the CEO. After Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai held a video conference and had an in-depth discussion on this cooperation, the cooperation was basically finalized.

CNBC finally revealed that the first version of the contact tracing technology API will be released on May 1st, US time.