Comment by dmethvin
11 years ago
> 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.
I read the article; if you want out of their grip you can. You just need to provide alternatives for the Google apps and appstore. That is not trivial, but for a company like Samsung that wouldn't be that big of an issue either.
Acer tried to release it while still wanting to be in the 'Android family' (Open Handset Alliance); they didn't have their own substitutes and didn't want to make a clean break with Google (OHA). If they wanted that and would have provided an appstore, they could've.
> 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.
I think the strongest argument the article makes is the claim about the new Location APIs. Location algorithms are not dependent on Google services and have always been part of the core APIs, but now Google is moving new location algorithms into their closed source app. It's an obvious power grab, they want AOSP to be less and less useful on its own.
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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?
Then why make a free "open" OS in the first place? If it was such a concern that Google should control the OS they could have done what Microsoft did with licensing Windows, or like Apple where they keep iOS to themselves for their own hardware.
The fact that I can download and build Android is what makes it meaningfully open.
Can you sent me a link to the current HEAD?
You can't download and build what consumers think of as Android.
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.
Percentage of market share is not a clear indication of monopoly. From what I could find, 50% is typically the bare minimum to warrant consideration, and 70 - 75% will get more serious scrutiny. Also, it differs from country to country. In the UK, Tesco was investigated even though it had a market share of only 30%.
I also recall reading one of the EU's regulators (was it Joaquin Almunia?) say that (paraphrasing) "we start sniffing around when any one party gets a market share north of 60%." Unfortunately, I cannot find that article.
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How can anything other that 99% market share even be considered a monopoly? If it's 80% or 90% then there is obviously choice and thus no monopoly.
Anti trust is such bunk...
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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).