Sharing is close in my opinion one of Google’s biggest successes in recent times. It’s true, and I said it at the time, that it could and should have come sooner because Apple has had AirDrop for its ecosystem for years. But hey, if we’re going to stick to the rich and varied Spanish proverb, then we have to remember that it’s never too late if luck is good. And indeed, in this case luck is undoubtedly good.

To give a little context for those unfamiliar with this Android feature, AirDrop was announced in September of last year and initially, enabled easy and wireless file transfer between Android and ChromeOS, Google’s operating system used in Chromebooks. When said announcement was made, yes, I suggested that its usefulness would increase substantially if it added Windows compatibility in addition to ChromeOS.

Well, probably due to my influence, or maybe because they thought about it earlier (I’m inclined to think it was because of me), we learned already in April 2023 that indeed Nearby sharing would extend its reach to Windows. Since its announcement, the deployment has been quite fast, and two months later, Google considered the deployment complete and therefore confirmed its official launch once the Nearby Sharing feature was already available for all devices compatible with the system.

This deployment was generally very positive, but nevertheless it seems that its reach exceeded what it should have, and as a result now, as we can read in Phone Arena, Google disables Nearby Sharing on Android devices with professional accountsthat is, those that are created by companies and other types of entities for their workers and that are therefore usually managed (as well as the devices on which they are used) by the IT departments of these entities.

The problem is that with Nearby Sharing, users can transfer digital assets to the device thereby bypassing the security policy configured by administrators who are responsible for them. And as virtually anyone who has worked at virtually any company knows, there is a certain profile of worker that is particularly prone to finding these types of security holes and actively exploiting them (yes, you guessed it, I’m talking about me again).

With this modification, the problem is completely eliminated, although in the future Google is expected to enable the necessary means for device administrators to enable or disable Nearby Sharing depending on the needs of each worker. However, something I understand can be complex and therefore could take some time.