Comment by cromwellian
11 years ago
Most of the examples of Google closed apps that are not part of the AOSP release are in fact apps that are based off of Google data-center services. Would it really help Samsung if the source to the Gmail app was open? Since Google controls the server side, and the client-server protocol, it limits the amount of innovation they can do.
The web equivalent would be like claiming that Chrome OS isn't open because the source to Gmail isn't available.
Google is stuck behind a rock and a hard place. If they don't try to create incentives for a unified experience, they get bashed for encouraging fragmentation, if they do assert a level of control, they get bashed for not being completely open.
> Google is stuck behind a rock and a hard place. If they don't try to create incentives for a unified experience, they get bashed for encouraging fragmentation, if they do assert a level of control, they get bashed for not being completely open.
This is exactly the position Microsoft was in during the mid-1990s, even before they went after Netscape. The article is saying that Google is even applying some of the same strong-arm tactics to keep OEMs in line. Fortunately, Google can point to Apple and say they're not a monopoly the way Microsoft was in its market. Plus, Android still looks really open compared to iOS.
Android is open enough to replace all Google apps with your own (Samsung) and open your own appstore (Amazon). Also companies are completely free to not pick Android (Tizen / Firefox OS / ?) and they are free not to license the Google apps and put their own or (other) open source ones. It would be hard to make Google out to be a monopolist via that route.
MS was different; there weren't much alternatives and the alternatives which were there were squashed by MS. People currently want the apps in the appstore; they want to play clash of clans; they don't care about the Google gmail app. This being the same bubble world as the chromebook thread on HN yesterday; tech people think non tech people actually notice what they are running; they generally don't. If they can play the games their friends are playing and if they can use 'the software' they are used to they are happy. What brand it is is not important.
As an example; when I sit with any of my family members (they are all non tech), they will say 'I will open up Word now' or ' I will open up Excel now' to me when we need to organize something or go over numbers of one of the companies. What pops up definitely never is Word or Excel but rather Libre Office or Google Docs or some free Android/iPad variety. No-one I know actually has or uses MS Office; they use the terms because they don't know 'spreadsheet' and 'word processor' is a mouthful. They don't miss Windows and would even mostly hate it if they had to work with it now (after tablets or chromebooks and even Macs, Windows for non-tech people Windows seems incredibly hard and tech to use).
All these alternatives and Android being deployed by many different companies in different forms would make it hard to call Google a monopolist on that grounds. Samsung could turn into one though.
Did you even read the article?
And if you want to stay on the technical side.. then what about contributors? I've helped port android to a couple devices. I had no idea google had a contract obligation with hardware makers that my work should have to be used in one way or another. I feel dirty.
edit: the Acer example goes exactly against what you mention. They tried to ship a fork, with some of the substitutions you mention. google released the layers.
1 reply →
> This being the same bubble world as the chromebook thread on HN yesterday; tech people think non tech people actually notice what they are running; they generally don't. If they can play the games their friends are playing and if they can use 'the software' they are used to they are happy. What brand it is is not important.
At the same time, those people are first to complain about a single button located somewhere different from what remember. Unless all they are doing is the bare minimum that any of interface elements doesn't matter, they would continue caring about what operating system they would be running on. I guess problems are people between complete novices and experts -- they know more than some basics (to recognize what they are running) but not quite up there to mitigate the difference themselves. (And somewhat, this could be said true so far as there haven't been so much of UI functional changes happened up to 7 from the Windows 95 era. People around me haven't really exposed to themselves to Windows 8.x would do to them when they finally hit them...)
So how long have you been working for Google?
I read the article and kept hearing echos of the Microsoft strategy of the 90s as well.
History may not repeat, but it rhymes.
I think that you hear whatever you want to hear, but the truth is very different: Google's apps and APIs are just cloud endpoints and weaving them into AOSP doesn't make sense and just delays updates, as the same author previously scribbled: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/balky-carriers-and-sl...
As for "strong-arm tactics", what is referred to is explained in this post: http://officialandroid.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-benefits-imp...
As Andy Rubin puts it, Google will not encourage non compatible forks, it is in their interest to have Android developed apps run on all Android devices. Anyone can still have a go but Google won't encourage it.
It's a very flawed and overwritten attack piece, seemingly coming out of nowhere.
7 replies →
I'm interested in how you think it works well for Google if they do nothing and allow Alibaba's Aliyun OS to market themselves as android. When issues do arise and incompatibilities in apps occur.. is this not the fragmentation that Google already is looked down upon ?
Saying 'iOS is more closed' doesn't make Android meaningfully open.
What about the fact that competitors are using the OS without so much as asking Google?
1 reply →
The fact that I can download and build Android is what makes it meaningfully open.
2 replies →
Right. Being able to fork the OS and release devices like the Kindle Fire do make Android meangingfully open.
Saying 'iOS is more closed' is just obvious.
I don't think Apple will be a good defense if Android's market share is 80%.
80% does not a monopoly make. Microsoft was in an entirely different position at the time.
21 replies →
Hasn't that always been the relationship between Microsoft and Apple in the desktop world?
That depends on how the market share of revenue looks as well, and to my knowledge the percentage of revenue Apple receives is not dropping nearly as fast (and Google's not the main competitor there, Samsung is, even if it's using Google software).
Aren't we forgetting about the closed-source elephant in the room - Google Play Services - the "platform behind the platform"?
>> Play Services has system-level powers, but it's updatable. It's part of the Google apps package, so it's not open source. OEMs are not allowed to modify it, making it completely under Google's control. Play Services basically acts as a shim between the normal apps and the installed Android OS. Right now Play Services handles the Google Maps API, Google Account syncing, remote wipe, push messages, the Play Games back end, and many other duties. If you ever question the power of Google Play Services, try disabling it. Nearly every Google App on your device will break. [Source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/balky-carriers-and-sl...]
Google Play Services are not (currently) required for developing and running apps, unless those apps integrate with Google's services, like Google Accounts and Google Maps. Of course nearly every Google App will break if you disable it, since every Google App is proprietary and Google's Play Services is their common framework.
The question is - do third-party apps break if you disable Google Play Services? And the answer is that it depends. If the app needs Google's services then it will stop working. However, making Play Services open-source, at least for the functionality provided right now, wouldn't do any good. Because those services rely on Google's server-side infrastructure, so you're still at their mercy.
The only thing that bothers me is the Wifi-based location tracking. Google collects info about nearby Wifi networks and so the phone is able to give a pretty good estimate of latitude/longitude coordinates, even without turning the GPS on. Turning Google Play Services off means that Wifi-based location tracking stops working. And this is a pain, given that many apps these days (Facebook, Twitter) want to get your current city and so Facebook for example is accessing my GPS every time I open the app, with no way to turn this functionality off and it's consuming my battery and the GPS status notifier is annoying. In case you're wondering I had to turn Wifi-based location tracking because of a bug in the latest Android 4.3, as it is preventing my Nexus 4 to go to sleep, thus draining my battery.
> And this is a pain, given that many apps these days (Facebook, Twitter) want to get your current city...
Them wanting, I can understand. But why should you give them that?
10 replies →
This is either becoming or already is the core of Android, and it's closed source and no one wants to talk abut it. It's ridiculous.
iirc Google Play Services becoming updateable was to work around carriers and manufacturers not giving android os updates to their end-users.
>Most of the examples of Google closed apps that are not part of the AOSP release are in fact apps that are based off of Google data-center services. Would it really help Samsung if the source to the Gmail app was open? Since Google controls the server side, and the client-server protocol, it limits the amount of innovation they can do.
I don't think Google's development of their own services is issue here. The issue, in my understanding, is that Google ties its services to Android under "Android compatibility" label.
Skyhook is a great example (the article mentions it) - mapping is important for Google, and Google literally pushed the company out of business by strong-arming manufacturers to stop using Skyhook services.
Can, say, Samsung make a deal with Yahoo to drop gmail, include only Yahoo mail on their phones and still pass "compatibility" test in Google, and have access to Google Play store and the rest of the services? Can you imagine HTC phone with Nokia maps? (speaking of maps and Nokia, anyone is quick to point that Nokia made a huge mistake not betting on Android as Symbian replacement. And couple of months ago we saw that mapping is so important to Nokia that they're ready to let negotiations with Microsoft fail just to keep mapping in their hands. Does anyone thinks that Nokia would be permitted to make Android phones with Nokia maps?)
The fact that Google services are (mostly) better than competition isn't relevant here - back in the day Internet Explorer was way better than Netscape Navigator, but that fact didn't made MS actions any better.
I think there is some legitimacy to this line of criticism, but as Amazon has shown, large organizations can produce their own forks.
I can imagine too that selective replacement of chunks of the 'Google Experience' might make consumers get a negative impression of the Google brand if the replacement has issues. Like if you replace the location with Skyhook or Nokia, and the new Maps app is just called "Maps", and if there are serious issues, consumers might say "Man, this Google Maps on Android sucks!" without realizing it's not Google Maps, because Android is strongly brand associated with Google.
There's also a logical rational for Amazon-style forking, in the sense that if you're going for a complete reskinning, the end result will likely be a lot better if it is completely horizontally and vertically integrated by a single vendor rather than cobbled together -- 'bloatware' experience.
I'm already disappointed by my inability to remove the (rather poor) Samsung apps from my phone, as I'd like to only use the 'proper' Google apps (for me, gmail/google calendar app is 50+% of phone usage). It's not enough for companies to be able to produce their own forks - the forks still need to be competitive or better than Google versions, and that's not so easy to do.
> Google literally pushed the company out of business by strong-arming manufacturers to stop using Skyhook services.
This is what Skyhook claimed, but the reality was much different. Skyhook were intentionally or unintentionally polluting the Google AP database. They refused to change and so failed the compatability test.
Look into this more.
And, in fact, the same author made the exact same point about Google Play Services being a big tool Google is using to get past OS version fragmentation about a month-and-a-half ago:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/balky-carriers-and-sl...
The author was all-praises on Google for its actions.
"Not having to package everything into a major OS update means Google can get features out to more users much faster and more frequently than before. ... This should all lead to a more unified, less fragmented, healthier Android ecosystem."
You're partly right, but in regards to the Gmail app, what I don't like about Android is that it doesn't come with a good email client that's not GMail. Android's GMail client is very polished and there's not much in it that's specific to Gmail, it could be a generic email client that works with POP3/IMAP/SMTP and other standards as well. The experience of users that aren't into Android's own services do suffer.
But I do not agree with people that claim Android is not open. Building an operating system is a big challenge and stock Android is enough for anyone to fork and do whatever they want. I actually play around with an old Galaxy S on top of which I installed Cyanogenmod without any of Google's Apps. The only problem is that developers only publish their apps on Google Play, which is a shame, given that Android does allow you to install apps from third party sources and you could have a good experience just with stock Android. I ended up installing Amazon's Appstore on it, which is not as good as Google Play, but at least they've got special offers :-)
> Android's GMail client is very polished and there's not much in it that's specific to Gmail, it could be a generic email client that works with POP3/IMAP/SMTP and other standards as well. The experience of users that aren't into Android's own services do suffer.
GMail uses a proprietary protocol that is decidedly not imap. It has features like colorized labels and inbox prioritizing that just isn't present in imap. Furthermore it has completely different performance characteristics (e.g it is much faster) than what imap email can provide. No one seem to have any details on exactly what the protocol is or how it works. They definitely seem to not want any third party clients accessing gmail though. Otherwise they would have published a protocol specification a long time ago.
> GMail uses a proprietary protocol that is decidedly not imap
A thousand times, this.
Using a traditional IMAP client such as offlineimap makes this painfully obvious. Gmail synchronizes labels as "folders", not "tags", for some unknown reason, which means that mail in the inbox ends up getting duplicated on disk under "All Mail", and then again for every single label attached to that label.
Archiving hijacks the way that deleting works, and while clients can adjust to this, it breaks the way IMAP is supposed to work. If clients have to add special cases to interact with your service, that means you're going off-protocol!
Even the login is different. On IMAP, your username should be "foo", not "foo@example.com".
1 reply →
> I actually play around with an old Galaxy S on top of which I installed Cyanogenmod without any of Google's Apps. The only problem is that developers only publish their apps on Google Play, which is a shame, given that Android does allow you to install apps from third party sources and you could have a good experience just with stock Android.
I went through the same process of installing Cyanogenmod without Google Apps and it made me wonder why developers of free apps don't distribute them outside Play e.g. on their sites. I understand paid apps and/or apps that have in app purchase but there are a lot of just free apps that just can't be downloaded. Any theories?
Well one theory is that simply setting up a site that you can download an APK from is a hassle. It either costs you bandwidth if it's your own server, or has terrible UX if it is hosted via a share site.
There's always https://f-droid.org - it has somewhat vetted free-as-in-freedom apps that must compile from source.
2 replies →
> What I don't like about Android is that it doesn't come with a good email client that's not GMail.
That would be like saying that the default camera app does not come with filters, shaders and other features that you like. What Google does is, gives a good enough app for generic use and leaves options open for developers to make better things and put them on the Play Store.
If Google starts incorporating all such features, it'll get much more difficult for developers to earn through the store.
Yeah, but the email app on iOS is pretty polished and nowadays people expect the stock browser and the stock email app to be pretty good, especially on mobile devices. I'm not saying that Android's out of the box functionality should encompass everything, just the basic necessities, like email and web browsing. And I don't want people without an Android to get the wrong idea - Android does come with a standard email client, it's just that it's much, much less polished than the GMail app, which is a shame.
Is GMail subject to the same task killer that 3rd party apps are? I suspect it isn't.
If that's true then Google has given itself a good monopoly for email on its own OS, much like Microsoft did for Internet Explorer.
Are you referring to how Android will reclaim memory from inactive processes? Android handles memory differently than you expect, it tries to keep thinks in memory and only kills apps if it needs their memory back for a more demanding process.
Google consolidating most APIs into Play Services would ensure it's constantly active and never purged from memory, but the same isn't true of Gmail or other Google Apps. They can and are purged from memory as other apps demand more memory. That being said, I've encountered very few situations where any app gets purged from memory. About the only time this happens is if I play a game like Galaxy On Fire or decide to open 100 tabs in Chrome.
2 replies →
Your suspicion is wrong and really, really, out there as well. I'm surprised to hear someone thinks this.
Hypothetically, if you made all parts of android rely on "Google Data center services" would moves to close it off be justified?
This is what Play Services are moving towards.
>off of
Learn English, and then we'll talk.
"Off of" has been an English construction since the 1500s. It's entirely reasonable and appropriate in this context, much like contractions in informal written English.
But I'm fairly sure I'm replying to a throwaway account, so it's not like you were seriously interested.