Google Rivets: Strong or Brittle?
June 14, 2019
An app that helps kids learn to read sounds like a great Googley idea. And (concerns about potential advertising to or tracking of minors aside) it would be—if only it were easy to access. One frustrated father at Ausdroid reports, “Google’s New Kid-Focused Reading App Revit is Incompatible with Their Kid-Focused Family Link Accounts.” After checking out the app for himself, writer Duncan Jaffrey decided it was worthy of setting up for his daughter. He had no problems using the parent-side setup from his Google account. But when he got to the tablet’s Family Link account, things went awry. He writes:
“Surely this app – an educational app for kids – should be able to work nicely with Family Link. Well, no, it doesn’t. It appears there’s no way for me to sign into Rivet using my Google account, using its authorization process on an Android device running a kids Family Link profile, unless I happen to have a Google for Education account myself. Which I don’t.
We noted this statement:
“So, I figure it’s a reading app, it’s not that bad if I just allow complete access for this app, so I try to sign into Rivet with my daughter’s Google Family Link account … you guessed it a child’s Family Link account is not allowed to be used to sign into Rivet. Agrahhhhhhh.
The article added:
“So, what was I left with? I had to run the app not signed in, which means you’re not getting the progress and usage tracking, it also means that when your child accidentally hits the persistent LOG IN button that’s always on screen it pulls them out of the story their reading with the resulting tech-inspired outrage you’d expect from a child.”
Jaffrey does note that Rivet was created by one of Google’s labs, Area 120, which operates more or less independently. Perhaps, he grants, that is why the apps do not play well together. Whatever the reason, the author has asked Google about a work-around; there are no updates, though, as of this writing.
Cynthia Murrell, June 14, 2019
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