Google depreciating open source in Android

[Skel]

You can't keep one foot in the bucket and the other out.
If Acer wants to fork Android anytime, they're free to do so and leave the Google Open Handset Alliance.

So how is it the same as what MS did then? You won't say that it's totally different from what MS did, but yet you won't any proof that it's the same as what MS did?

I get that I stepped in it by mentioning MS, because how dare anyone point out Google is using it's position in the marketplace to force.. sorry, persuade OEMs to use it's services heavy version of Android. I quote from the article again..

For OEMs, this means they aren't allowed to slowly transition from Google's Android to a fork. The second they ship one device that runs a competing fork, they are given the kiss of death and booted out of the Android family—it must be a clean break. This, by design, makes switching to forked Android a terrifying prospect to any established Android OEM. You must jump off the Google cliff, and there's no going back.

So it sounds like you either get to use the Google Android with all it's many perks like gmail, and play support or you get shafted out into the cold without any Google support. What Android type phone is going to sell without Gmail, or the marketplace? Yeah they can do it, but be honest no one wants to lose those major draws. To my point, MS did the same thing to OEMs back in the 90s. It put them in a you either only provide Windows based PCs or lose support. Could the OEMs put out Linux machines? Yep.. but no OEM was going to risk losing Windows as that was the big sell. That's what reminded me of it. How accurate it is, I haven't a clue. I'm just going off what I said in the beginning..

Article reminds me of Microsoft in the 90s..

Having said that, I will also say that I still agree with Google putting a clamp on it's OS. If they didn't they risk it spinning far away from them and putting them in a place where they risk putting all this money and effort into R&D for the OS without and reward. I also think it's a great thing for support. I remember supporting PCs back in DOS and before 5.0 there were a lot of different flavors each with different commands in them. Once things were standardized support was so much easier.

 

[s44]

I get that I stepped in it by mentioning MS, because how dare anyone point out Google is using it's position in the marketplace to force.. sorry, persuade OEMs to use it's services heavy version of Android.

Google is using its supremacy in services to... get people to use its services.

Android itself isn't supporting Google's inferior services platform, the way Windows boosted IE. If Google's services ever started sucking, people would be *incentivized* to do their own Android distros that took advantage, not prevented.

 

[Skel]

Google is using its supremacy in services to... get people to use its services.

Android itself isn't supporting Google's inferior services platform, the way Windows boosted IE. If Google's services ever started sucking, people would be *incentivized* to do their own Android distros that took advantage, not prevented.

According to the article.. The OEMs would not be able to do their own versions of Android. If they did they'd lose ALL of the Google services, which to me at least, seem to be the heart of the phone.

I'd also like to point out, I never said a thing about IE. I was talking about the way MS treated the OEMs. There was a lot more to MS's assholeness than a browser.

 

[lothar]

According to the article.. The OEMs would not be able to do their own versions of Android. If they did they'd lose ALL of the Google services, which to me at least, seem to be the heart of the phone.

I'd also like to point out, I never said a thing about IE. I was talking about the way MS treated the OEMs. There was a lot more to MS's assholeness than a browser.

They can either follow Amazon's route in replacing Google's services with their own, or contact Microsoft and Nokia and convince them to port their own services to Android instead.

All Microsoft has to do is port their APIs to Android and they'll fork it instantly and destroy Google's OHA.
Similarly, Apple can do exactly the same thing today if it wanted to.

But knowing Steven Ballmer...That's not going to happen because he's too busy scoffing at Android and the iPhone.
On Android and Google's hiring spree:

"I don't really understand their strategy. Maybe somebody else does. If I went to my shareholder meeting, my analyst meeting, and said: 'Hey, we've just launched a new product that has no revenue model!'… I'm not sure that my investors would take that very well. But that's kind of what Google's telling their investors about Android." (November 2008)

“You don’t need to be a computer scientist to use a Windows Phone. I think you do to use an Android phone…It is hard for me to be excited about the Android phones.”

"They're going to double their number of employees in a year. That's insane, in my opinion...I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLRtUGviSc8

 

[Cerb]

What's the difference between an Apache and a TEA license?
I thought I remembered reading from somewhere that if Google had licensed Android under the TEA license instead of Apache that Oracle wouldn't have any standing in suing Google.

Explain?

??? I don't see any substantive differences between it and the Apache 2.0 license; nor does the license matter for Oracle.

The Oracle lawsuit was Oracle trying to curb-stomp a potential competitor. They had no standing suing Google in the first place, which is how Google won. IE, Google never disproved that they did anything Oracle claimed, but rather convinced the judge, who clearly realized how important his ruling could be, that the very underpinning's of Oracle's suit were BS.

 

[Skel]

They can either follow Amazon's route in replacing Google's services with their own, or contact Microsoft and Nokia and convince them to port their own services to Android instead.

All Microsoft has to do is port their APIs to Android and they'll fork it instantly and destroy Google's OHA.
Similarly, Apple can do exactly the same thing today if it wanted to.

But knowing Steven Ballmer...That's not going to happen because he's too busy scoffing at Android and the iPhone.
On Android and Google's hiring spree:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLRtUGviSc8

You make a point, but I think it'll take a lot more than a MS to come in use the base. If MS' services were enough of a draw WP would see a lot more market share. As it stands the key draw is the ecosystem which you'd lose by going with a forked Android platform.

 

[lothar]

You make a point, but I think it'll take a lot more than a MS to come in use the base. If MS' services were enough of a draw WP would see a lot more market share. As it stands the key draw is the ecosystem which you'd lose by going with a forked Android platform.

More people use Hotmail than Gmail. Hell, more people use Yahoo than Gmail also.
More people use Skype/MSN Messenger than Google Voice/Google Talk.
More people use IE than Chrome.
More people and businesses use Micosoft's Azure cloud platform than Google's cloud platform.
Bing can do almost all things that Google Search can do(except the "Google Now" stuff that was only released a year ago).
More people use Office than Google Docs.

So what does Google have over Microsoft again? Maps, Play Store, and YouTube. That's it.
Maps? Microsoft can easily solve that problem by buying NAVTEQ from Nokia for $5 billion. Problem solved.

And the Play Store which Microsoft can easily do(just like STEAM, Amazon, EA, and many other companies are in PC digital distribution).
Microsoft will integrate their store on Windows OS, Xbox, and WP8 devices to be one and the same. I don't see any reason why they can't do the same on Android if they intentionally want to kill it like I suggested.

YouTube? There's no Microsoft replacement but you can still watch YouTube on the web app.

Microsoft's services are enough of a draw. The problem was instead of developing and promoting them, Ballmer was busy scoffing at Android and the iPhone.
Again, there is nothing stopping Microsoft from porting their API's to Android to kill Google.
The longer they take to do that, the less successful that they'll be in achieving that.
If they had attempted to do this 3 years ago, I have no doubt in my mind that they could have succeeded.
Create their own Android fork and not charge for it, while suing any Google OHA members that chose to continue with Google's Android version. Google can't respond to that because they don't have any valuable patents.

But again...Ballmer never understood the strategy of "free" stuff model, so what I'm suggesting probably might never happen.

"I don't really understand their strategy. Maybe somebody else does. If I went to my shareholder meeting, my analyst meeting, and said: 'Hey, we've just launched a new product that has no revenue model!'… I'm not sure that my investors would take that very well. But that's kind of what Google's telling their investors about Android." (November 2008)

 

[Skel]

More people use Hotmail than Gmail. Hell, more people use Yahoo than Gmail also.
More people use Skype/MSN Messenger than Google Voice/Google Talk.
More people use IE than Chrome.
More people and businesses use Micosoft's Azure cloud platform than Google's cloud platform.
Bing can do almost all things that Google Search can do(except the "Google Now" stuff that was only released a year ago).
More people use Office than Google Docs.

So what does Google have over Microsoft again? Maps, Play Store, and YouTube. That's it.
Maps? Microsoft can easily solve that problem by buying NAVTEQ from Nokia for $5 billion. Problem solved.

And the Play Store which Microsoft can easily do(just like STEAM, Amazon, EA, and many other companies are in PC digital distribution).
Microsoft will integrate their store on Windows OS, Xbox, and WP8 devices to be one and the same. I don't see any reason why they can't do the same on Android if they intentionally want to kill it like I suggested.

YouTube? There's no Microsoft replacement but you can still watch YouTube on the web app.

Microsoft's services are enough of a draw. The problem was instead of developing and promoting them, Ballmer was busy scoffing at Android and the iPhone.
Again, there is nothing stopping Microsoft from porting their API's to Android to kill Google.
The longer they take to do that, the less successful that they'll be in achieving that.
If they had attempted to do this 3 years ago, I have no doubt in my mind that they could have succeeded.
Create their own Android fork and not charge for it, while suing any Google OHA members that chose to continue with Google's Android version. Google can't respond to that because they don't have any valuable patents.

But again...Ballmer never understood the strategy of "free" stuff model, so what I'm suggesting probably might never happen.

If I strip away all the Google services from Android how is it any better than WP? I honestly don't know Android that well, so I'm really asking. Also if I strip out the Google services from the phone how well do you think it'll really sell? Enough to really compete with the Google version of Android?

 

[s44]

If I strip away all the Google services from Android how is it any better than WP?

Notifications, widgets, intents, giant pile of apps...

 

[lothar]

If I strip away all the Google services from Android how is it any better than WP? I honestly don't know Android that well, so I'm really asking. Also if I strip out the Google services from the phone how well do you think it'll really sell? Enough to really compete with the Google version of Android?

It's better for the company Microsoft(more market share numbers, more people hooked on their services, etc...) and might also be better for both the Android manufacturers and users given what I proposed if Microsoft puts their mind to it.
WP8 is missing many things as s44 has already mentioned, along with massive customization. They can take where Android left off and improve upon it by adding their "WP8" special sauce(only the good parts) to it. Current WP8 customers will easily be bought over and they have potential to win millions of Android customers while at it.

Users can already get equivalent Google services from Microsoft today for the most part.

Judging by how well Amazon is doing with that in selling Kindle devices and apps on their store, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that a company like Microsoft can't be successful doing the same thing to Android if they put their mind to it and use their Windows OS, Xbox, and Zune clout to go with in creating a unified market system for all their products given a small fry company like Amazon is able to do it.

A free Android license from Microsoft with Microsoft's services replaced with Google, or a pay a $15-20(or hell, even charge triple digits since they're not FRAND patents)/device fee for the same exact Android from Google with Google services.
For that to work though, Microsoft has to provide it's own version of Android for free with equivalent Google services(which it has).

Part of the reason that WP8 isn't as successful is that Microsoft also charges OEMs a WP8 licensing fee due to Ballmer not understanding how Google can provide Android for free. In other words, he's charging the manufacturers a $15/device fee for Android, and yet charging those same manufacturers a WP8 licensing fee/device to make WP8 which is why Samsung, LG, and HTC don't care much about WP8, along with seeing the special treatment they give to Nokia.
Remember that a Windows RT(Tablet OS) license was rumored to cost OEMs $95/device?

 

[lothar]

Basically, what I'm saying is this:

Remember when Apple started Webkit?
Google came on board later and started contributing to the project with Apple.
Apple started adding useless bloated code to Webkit, and now Google is creating a fork of Webkit by developing "Blink" and Opera has followed suit with Google.

Microsoft can do the same thing here with Android that Google is doing with Webkit.

 

[Tsaar]

More people use Hotmail than Gmail. Hell, more people use Yahoo than Gmail also.

I actually believe Gmail is number 1.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/28/gmail-hotmail-yahoo-email-users/

 

[lothar]

I actually believe Gmail is number 1.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/28/gmail-hotmail-yahoo-email-users/

In January, the company said on an earnings call that it had 350 million monthly active users on Gmail, based on its own internal data. Today that number sits at 425 million monthly actives, again based on its own data with no third-party confirmation.

Web analytics company comScore, on the other hand, told us that Google has way less unique visitors and still gives the edge to Hotmail and Yahoo. ComScore’s latest numbers from May have Hotmail at No. 1 with 325 million unique visitors, Yahoo at No. 2 with 298 million users, and Gmail at No. 3 with 289 million users.

Only if you use Google's internal data and not a 3rd party source as stated in your linked article.

That said, that article is from 2012.
Regardless of whether Gmail is #1 today or not, this doesn't dilute what I'm saying though...Hotmail still has as much users as Gmail does and is an equivalent service from Microsoft.

 

[Skel]

It's better for the company Microsoft(more market share numbers, more people hooked on their services, etc...) and might also be better for both the Android manufacturers and users given what I proposed if Microsoft puts their mind to it.
WP8 is missing many things as s44 has already mentioned, along with massive customization. They can take where Android left off and improve upon it by adding their "WP8" special sauce(only the good parts) to it. Current WP8 customers will easily be bought over and they have potential to win millions of Android customers while at it.

Users can already get equivalent Google services from Microsoft today for the most part.

Judging by how well Amazon is doing with that in selling Kindle devices and apps on their store, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that a company like Microsoft can't be successful doing the same thing to Android if they put their mind to it and use their Windows OS, Xbox, and Zune clout to go with in creating a unified market system for all their products given a small fry company like Amazon is able to do it.

A free Android license from Microsoft with Microsoft's services replaced with Google, or a pay a $15-20(or hell, even charge triple digits since they're not FRAND patents)/device fee for the same exact Android from Google with Google services.
For that to work though, Microsoft has to provide it's own version of Android for free with equivalent Google services(which it has).

Part of the reason that WP8 isn't as successful is that Microsoft also charges OEMs a WP8 licensing fee due to Ballmer not understanding how Google can provide Android for free. In other words, he's charging the manufacturers a $15/device fee for Android, and yet charging those same manufacturers a WP8 licensing fee/device to make WP8 which is why Samsung, LG, and HTC don't care much about WP8, along with seeing the special treatment they give to Nokia.
Remember that a Windows RT(Tablet OS) license was rumored to cost OEMs $95/device?

You make some good points. I can understand what you're saying, and honestly don't see any reason to disagree with your points on MS making a quality Android fork. I do question someone like Acer who doesn't have the resources that MS and Amazon have, being successful using a custom Android fork. They're more in line with what I mean with Google strong arming OEMs into using their Android. (I also admit I helped cause the thread drift with my lack of understanding on the platforms). Do a smaller OEM like Acer have a prayer without Google apps? It's even worse with the current state of things with MS and Apple's services tied to their own competing platforms. That's what MS did to Dell and other PC makers, told them to either load Windows without competing apps like Netscape or lose key level pricing.

 

[lothar]

You make some good points. I can understand what you're saying, and honestly don't see any reason to disagree with your points on MS making a quality Android fork. I do question someone like Acer who doesn't have the resources that MS and Amazon have, being successful using a custom Android fork. They're more in line with what I mean with Google strong arming OEMs into using their Android. (I also admit I helped cause the thread drift with my lack of understanding on the platforms). Do a smaller OEM like Acer have a prayer without Google apps? It's even worse with the current state of things with MS and Apple's services tied to their own competing platforms. That's what MS did to Dell and other PC makers, told them to either load Windows without competing apps like Netscape or lose key level pricing.

Those manufacturers won't be able to regardless of which OS they go with.
They can choose to leave Google's OHA and develop phones for an Amazon or Microsoft Android fork anytime without Google Apps which are proprietary software. Or they can adopt Tizen or FireFox OS and still face the same patent attack that Android is facing today from Microsoft and Apple.
Those manufacturers should just stick to making devices and be like Dell, HP, Lenovo, and ASUS Windows computers. There's little to no hope for them in being able to make their own OS and services from the ground up regardless of whether it's Android, Windows or another OS if they can't survive the patent attacks.

Yes, but only if Acer(or any Android OEM that wants to leave the Android OHA) can convince Amazon or Microsoft to hold their hands.

The difference here though is either get approval for any Android handset or get kicked out of the OHA and not be able to use Google Apps.
That's a far cry from saying "Load Android without competing apps or pay more". Android is completely free, so no one can come in and ring the "anti-trust" jingle because OEMs are not being charged extra for leaving the Android OHA.
That's also a far cry from the 90's when Microsoft made IE, WMP, and other software deeply integrated into Windows OS that they were essentially irreplaceable and irremovable without breaking something in the whole OS or causing registry corruption issues.

 

[slashbinslashbash]

That's also a far cry from the 90's when Microsoft made IE, WMP, and other software deeply integrated into Windows OS that they were essentially irreplaceable and irremovable without breaking something in the whole OS or causing registry corruption issues.

You're missing the point... again. Integrating IE and WMP so they were irremovable isn't the point.

Microsoft strong-armed OEMs NOT to load competing software such as Netscape. That is the analogy he is making, the ONLY analogy he is making to MS in the 90's. You're conflating a bunch of other stuff in there. Which is understandable, since it was all part of the same anti-trust complaints and lawsuits; but on a technical level, the integration of IE had nothing to do with the incentives for the removal of Netscape.

 

[Phokus]

More people use Hotmail than Gmail. Hell, more people use Yahoo than Gmail also.
More people use Skype/MSN Messenger than Google Voice/Google Talk.
More people use IE than Chrome.
More people and businesses use Micosoft's Azure cloud platform than Google's cloud platform.
Bing can do almost all things that Google Search can do(except the "Google Now" stuff that was only released a year ago).
More people use Office than Google Docs.

So what does Google have over Microsoft again? Maps, Play Store, and YouTube. That's it.
Maps? Microsoft can easily solve that problem by buying NAVTEQ from Nokia for $5 billion. Problem solved.

And the Play Store which Microsoft can easily do(just like STEAM, Amazon, EA, and many other companies are in PC digital distribution).
Microsoft will integrate their store on Windows OS, Xbox, and WP8 devices to be one and the same. I don't see any reason why they can't do the same on Android if they intentionally want to kill it like I suggested.

YouTube? There's no Microsoft replacement but you can still watch YouTube on the web app.

Microsoft's services are enough of a draw. The problem was instead of developing and promoting them, Ballmer was busy scoffing at Android and the iPhone.
Again, there is nothing stopping Microsoft from porting their API's to Android to kill Google.
The longer they take to do that, the less successful that they'll be in achieving that.
If they had attempted to do this 3 years ago, I have no doubt in my mind that they could have succeeded.
Create their own Android fork and not charge for it, while suing any Google OHA members that chose to continue with Google's Android version. Google can't respond to that because they don't have any valuable patents.

But again...Ballmer never understood the strategy of "free" stuff model, so what I'm suggesting probably might never happen.

Uh, Chrome has a commanding lead over IE. Firefox is a distant 2nd and IE is a WAAYYYYY distant 3rd (even non-technical dummies know IE is terrible):

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

You also forgot Google Search, which is untouchable

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Wow. Very surprised what a huge lead Chrome has. It's an overrated browser IMO and Firefox is far better. The address bar still pisses me off in Chrome in that it sucks at pulling historical sites that you visited. That finally became marginally better in 2013, but this was like 5 years after the browser's been around.

I'm not surprised about Yahoo and Hotmail. GMail seems to only have huge traction in the US and Europe. In Asia, no one uses Gtalk/Hangouts. It's all MSN/Hotmail.

 

[s44]

Wow. Very surprised what a huge lead Chrome has. It's an overrated browser IMO and Firefox is far better.

I stuck to Firefox pretty religiously until it and my Nvidia driver decided not to play nice for about a year.

It also took them way too long to have a competitive mobile browser for cross-platform sync. Ironically, their current Android app is probably faster than Chrome, though I prefer Chrome's tab interface.

 

[Tom]

Google is using its supremacy in services to... get people to use its services.

Android itself isn't supporting Google's inferior services platform, the way Windows boosted IE. If Google's services ever started sucking, people would be *incentivized* to do their own Android distros that took advantage, not prevented.

Along that line, I just found out that Google Maps no longer has a Wikipedia layer.

Which was a really cool feature when going on driving trips and looking for interesting historical and other places.

Google needs to remember how fragile people's dependency on Google is.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Wow. Very surprised what a huge lead Chrome has. It's an overrated browser IMO and Firefox is far better. The address bar still pisses me off in Chrome in that it sucks at pulling historical sites that you visited. That finally became marginally better in 2013, but this was like 5 years after the browser's been around.

That site doesn't appear to separate desktop and mobile versions of Chrome. It's probably a demographics thing.

For example Netmarketshare shows this: http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0&qpcustomd=0

 

[Cerb]

Wow. Very surprised what a huge lead Chrome has. It's an overrated browser IMO and Firefox is far better.

FF is nicer in some ways, but they make some glaring errors that affect usability, such as scaling to DPI, causing everything to be fuzzy (the ideal thing to do would be to snap to 50% or 100% increments by default, to handle high-PPI displays, and scale all text done in pt/cm/in/etc.). The current add-ons for text zoom to deal with it don't work consistently.

That said, at work, I only 4GB RAM, and use FF anyways, because Chrome will chew through most of it a heartbeat, sometimes w/ <20 tabs (granted, several of those tabs are hogs, but damn!).

The address bar still pisses me off in Chrome in that it sucks at pulling historical sites that you visited.

Meanwhile, that itself is a great negative of FF's URL bar. Some of the drop-down suggestions will not bear any resemblance to what I'm typing in, FI, but will contain some portion of it in their title. Expanding the information it uses to filter with is not always a good thing, with profiles that go back years. OTOH, there are add-ons for that in FF .

Chrome, OTOH, will gladly crash and lose the whole session. FF will occasionally freeze [in Windows], but rarely loses sessions upon a crash. FF has addons that make major changes to the UI and UX, but they bog the browser down (OTOH, potential accessibility is very high, because you can often find a combo that works well for a given disabled user). Chrome has less in the way of customization plugins, and blocks some activities by ToS (such as YT DLers).

The web has become mature enough that every web browser can suck. It's just a matter of what kind of sucktitude you want to deal with.

I even have 3 different added browsers on my phone (customized ICS browser, Chrome, UC, Opera, and Opera Mini), and use all of them that I added, depending on what I'm doing. Opera, FI, seems to do the best job at making non-mobile sites usable within the confines of a crappy touch screen*, by figuring out where I intended to click, and what I intended to zoom, when my fingertip is covering 3+ lines of text. UC is consistently fast and responsive, so is my default for typical mobile browsing. Opera Mini works well when the formatting goes AWOL on others, usually on older non-mobile sites. FF was fine, but didn't seem to offer anything special, for me, anyway, over UC or Opera. TBH, though, having near-Atom processing power, and 1+GB RAM, they need to start getting away from having almost no options in the browsers (frankly, many apps need to get away from this kind of thinking, IMO).

* On that tangent of, "yes, I had a PDA or two back in the day, and pens are as good now as they were centuries ago, TYVM": if only Samsung would improve their audio quality on the Galaxy Notes. The audio quality is a steaming pile, which makes it a no-buy for me. But they got the screen and stylus just right, and everyone else needs to copy that ASAP, especially companies like Motorola and Pantech, that can consistently pull off good call quality.