14 ms·

Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

70 points by benpbenp 17y ago

alexgartrell 17y ago
So, I'm kind of torn here. We're watching Google ascend to a position where they can bend numerous markets to their whim, but they aren't really cheating the consumers at all. If anything, they've been great to us. Beyond that, as a college kid with an interest in distributed systems/networks, I should probably be angling to try to work there someday. But still, I'm scared, because it's hard to trust a company that big to do no evil. Am I just being paranoid? (Not a rhetorical question)
- ytinas 17y ago
  No, not at all. Worse, Google is a public company, toiling under the requirement (by law no less) to ever increase share holder value. If Google found itself as the main (or sole) player in the cell market there would be a very obvious way to dramatically increase share holder value. And if they play the game properly they will also use this time of dominance to set up so many blocks to market entry that no one will be able to easily do anything about it.
  - rms 17y ago
    I don't think that's true. Google's multi-class stock system makes them less subject to the immediate whims of the shareholders. Google's main strategy now is to make the internet better. Anything that improves the internet makes them more money. Cell phones are the internet. So if Google improves the cell phone marketplace, they make more money. Google taking advantage of a cell phone monopoly is unlikely if it takes away value from consumers.
    - ytinas 17y ago
      Have you read some of the early writings of Bill Gates? It can be difficult to reconcile that with some of the things he did with his company. Maybe Google's main strategy today is to make the Internet better and maybe today providing less value to the customers goes against their goals, but I suspect they're going to exist for a long time. What would make them more money in 15 years when they've killed off every competitor in the space (they may not do this, but they could. They have the resources)? You have very high expectations of people you don't know, and who wont remain in their current positions forever.
    - JadeNB 17y ago
      > Cell phones are the internet. What?
      - btilly 17y ago
        In large parts of the world most people access the internet over their phone, not a computer. For example India. Even here in the USA people are moving towards using their phone as a primary way to connect with services delivered over the internet.
        JadeNB 17y ago
        Sure, I would have bought some statement like “For many people, their cell phones are the way they access the Internet”; but “cell phones are the Internet” seems bizarre. I didn't know that about India! When I was last there, it was all still Internet cafés. (Well, it was 8 years ago, so I guess it's no surprise that a lot has changed—besides which, I get the impression that the current generation is a lot quicker than Americans to pick up on new tech trends as they become available.)
        rms 17y ago
        I meant what I said. I think it only sounds bizarre because you are thinking of the internet as something that is accessed rather than something that exists. Wikipedia defines the Internet as "a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide." Surely a cell phone is one of those interconnected computer networks.
        JadeNB 17y ago
        > I think it only sounds bizarre because you are thinking of the internet as something that is accessed rather than something that exists. Yes, you are mostly right. More precisely, I think of the Internet as consisting of the data on it rather than the machinery that pushes that data around, and this does explain most of why I didn't expect the wording of your comment. Still: > Surely a cell phone is one of those interconnected computer networks. Yes, I agree! However, it seems to me that that would be better expressed as kl4m did (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1047752 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1047752), possibly with ⊆ in place of ∈.
  - jambalaya 17y ago
    Until the next Google?
    - ytinas 17y ago
      Until now every company has had a weakness. Namely, dominance in some other market could be used to undercut them on price. The way to battle such companies has been to undermine their dominant market, or use the same strategy with a different market. Advertising is so unquantifiable at the moment that you can't undermine Google's market by simply selling advertising more cheaply. You could try to make a better search, but at some point Google wont be so depending on search for their ad revenue. The thing that is scary about Google is they have unlimited pockets. They can just continue throwing money away until they've taken over every market they care to. And then they can recoup those losses...
      - jnovek 17y ago
        Substitute Google with Microsoft and the products with MS products (say, Windows and Office) and you would have a common doomsday monopoly prediction ca. 1998. You can probably do the same with IBM before MS, but I'm too young to know. 20 years from now you'll wonder what you were so afraid of. Google is in its golden age, but it won't last forever.
        ytinas 17y ago
        But MS had exactly the weakness I was talking about. If someone gives away their OS for free what will you do? Giving away advertising for free wont affect anything.
        angelbob 17y ago
        Presumably they have a weakness. As you say, it's hard to quantify what they're doing, but that just means we don't have an easy way to figure it out. It still has statistics, limits and numbers, even if only their accountants have a good handle on what those are.
- lawn 17y ago
  A pretty good point against Google is their user support which isn't that good. I've never been in contact with them personally but I've read a fair amount of complaints. Especially with adwords it's hard to get a fair response from Google.
- gaius 17y ago
  they aren't really cheating the consumers at all. If anything, they've been great to us The thing is this: the relationship that exists between me and T-mobile is, I pay them money and they provide me with voice and data and BlackBerry services. Now I'm obviously just one individual, but I am fairly representative of a high-value subset of T-mobile's customer base and as a collective, T-mobile's interests are well aligned with our own. They aren't going to screw me because in doing so they'd screw us (e.g. all BB owners) and we'd migrate en-masse to Vodafone. The relationship that exists between me and Google is that they provide me with free services so long as I and those like me engage in behaviors that are beneficial to their advertisers. It's difficult as an end user to get support from Google because they don't really care; they'd care only if their quality of customer service could affect my purchasing decisions with their advertisers. If people who couldn't get tech support from Google for their phones switched to Bing for search maybe they'd care, but I doubt anyone does that...
  - btilly 17y ago
    Not exactly. The relationship you have with T-mobile is that they have signed you to a contract that locks you in to their service. At every turn T-mobile's goal is to lock you in, and once you're locked in they don't care about you. By contrast Google sets things up so that you can switch at any time, and they constantly have to keep you happy.
    - gaius 17y ago
      That's not really true, tho'. Come contract renewal time they are very accomodating. Or call them up and get through to Customer Retention and again, they'll bend over backwards. But my point stands. T-mobile is interested in keeping me happy, over the long term. Google is interested in keeping its advertisers happy. Given the choice between you or I and them, it will always choose them. That's why it wants all your data, even if they don't sell it directly, it is to monetize it.
      - InclinedPlane 17y ago
        Well sure. They'll seem like they'll do anything for you. But if you look at the cold, hard numbers you'll realize that the average phone contract sums out to maybe $1-2k over its life, with a pretty hefty profit margin. Of course they're going to "bend over backwards" for you at contract time. The used car salesman does the same thing. The rubes fall for the shtick nearly every time and the salesman laughs all the way to the bank. Keep in mind that these are the same folks who markup a service that costs practically nothing to run to rates 4x higher than the cost of transmitting data from the Hubble space telescope.
RyanMcGreal 17y ago
I can never tell how much of a given Register article is prescient contrarianism and how much is straight trolling.
- j_b_f 17y ago
  Yeah, it's a little over the top. I don't like how articles like this always fail to put forward the theory that maybe Google did the N1 to avoid Windows Mobile's fate by creating an in-production reference platform that commits them to backwards compatibility. It probably won't prevent further fragmentation, but it's worth a shot. Also, it's not Google's fault that the other Android devices suck ass.
- drats 17y ago
  Orlowski's articles are often blatant trolls, this one is way out there claiming that the mobile operators who've had us over barrels for so long should be felt sorry for because they can't break the net. Nobody is stopping them making a video on demand service, people are stopping them from making a video on demand that has priority and blocks others. And calling all the civil society groups that fought for net neutrality Google sockpuppets is a bit much. He's siding with all the other players to be a troll but we side with Google not because we love them but because we don't want the carriers to be anything more than ISPs. They are simply too stupid to manage it, look at SMS data transfer still costing four times more than data transfer to the Hubble telescope. Whereas you have Google pushing open jabber chat protocols and then building Wave on top of them. Who do you trust, a bunch of dying lock-in mongers with a track record of squeezing everything they can out of you and the troll-jester Orlowski or Google which has a decent track record open sourcing most of their stuff and adding value? As someone who has suffered iPhone lock-in and incredibly poor customer service (3G on my 3G iphone has never worked from day one and the carrier and Apple refused to do anything about it - even suggesting I "turn off 3G to abate the problem" WTF) I can't wait for unlocked no-contract Linux phones to become the norm and just wipe them all out. And I don't think Google cares about "the mobile industry" either, they can burn bridges there because that industry doesn't work as a block (there is no honour among thieves) and they can always find one to make the hardware for them.
  - 17y ago
SwellJoe 17y ago
Since we've all been screwed by the mobile industry for the entirety of its existence, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel indignant towards Google for pissing off said industry. There are very few industries more arrogant and abusive than the telcos (at least in the US; I dunno about the UK), and if Google wants to take their place, I'm all for it. Instead of playing the consumer-screwing game better (like Apple did with the iPhone and its subsidized/locked-in model) Google is leaving those decisions up to the consumer and giving them a fair deal all around. My impression is that Google looked at the existing phones and the way they were being sold (exclusive to specific carriers, and used to lock consumers in, just like all prior phones) and felt that it just wasn't doing the job the way they'd planned. Android had a reason for existing, and it was to break the logjam in the mobile industry so that Google could get on with the business of monetizing the hell out of mobile users. Since the old players decided to use Android to play by the old rules, Google simply reminded them of the way "open" is supposed to work. The play here is not for Google to become a traditional mobile device provider or to become a mobile service provider (though they'll touch on both). The play is to make the mobile web standard enough and good enough and pervasive enough to where Google can work their money-making magic there. Telcos are standing (aggressively) in the way of that, and the device makers remain willing partners in those plans.
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  The article is kind-of trolling against Google really. The idea that Googlenet means Google isn't respecting net neutrality is a sham. Other operators could create something like Googlenet for some internal purpose. They just extract rent from the public switching networking their operating. Sure, Google is very much about making money, it's just it makes money providing value-added-services (search+advertising) rather than extracting rent on anything that travels through it's pipes. It has the means to be the one who provides these value-add-services and it intends to keep those means. But the way it does this is increasing the quality and quantity of products - a good thing for us. A story where Google is preventing someone else from providing more would get my attention.
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  So your argument, in a nutshell, is "two wrongs do indeed make a right"?
sethg 17y ago
Awww. Do the poor wittle cellphone manufacturers have their poor wittle feelings hurt? Here, have a blankie. Really, I’m having trouble seeing what the complaint is behind all the bombast. The author doesn’t claim that Google is selling the phones at a loss or doing anything else that would raise an antitrust issue. Carriers can offer the Nexus alongside other manufacturers’ Android phones and, for that matter, the ten thousand other cellphone models that clog the market. Most consumers will choose among those models based on prices and features, not brand name. (Microsoft sells keyboards and mice under its own brand name, but they’ve hardly put the other keyboard and mouse manufacturers out of business.) So where’s the problem? That competition might reduce the profit margins of cellphone manufacturers? From my side of the salesman’s counter, that’s anything but a problem.
- nihilocrat 17y ago
  My first thoughts as well. It's about time someone with actual clout gave the mobile phone cartel the shaft. Yes, it's a cartel, when you pay $.50 a text message off your plan with all carriers there's gotta be some price fixing behind the scenes.
  - dfragnito 17y ago
    Not sure having one mobile provider will result in a reduction of price. It's free now but you will pay later.
  - gaius 17y ago
    Yes but who really does that? Except when roaming. Even a basic plan will have like a thousand texts a month.
    - dpritchett 17y ago
      I pay for texts on a per-message basis. Single texts are a quarter or so and the smallest minimum text plan is about $5/mo. I don't send 20 texts in a month so I just forego the service altogether. I still send and receive the occasional text but I don't care enough to pay for the package. It helps that I have a 5GB smartphone data plan.
eli 17y ago
The degree to which Google is "shaking up" the mobile industry has been vastly overstated by the media. I think this is mostly due to the crazy rumors that were flying before the launch (e.g. it was going to use SIP for calls, or that it would be massively subsidized/free even without a plan). What Google actually offered with the N1 is not very revolutionary. Selling unlocked phones online isn't new. Nor is having phones that run on your choice of US carriers (hello, Blackberry). Really, the only innovation here is at T-Mobile, which has calling plans that are a little bit cheaper each month if you bring your own phone instead of having them subsidize one.
dhyasama 17y ago
Does anyone really believe the companies that were supposedly shafted were surprised when Google released their own phone? I knew the Google phone was in the works long before any of the other phones came out and I don't have connections at Google or telcos. I'd bet money the device manufacturers and the the telcos were well aware of the Google phone when they agreed to work with Android.
coffeemug 17y ago
How much the consumers have gotten screwed on the phones is peanuts compared to how much the consumers have gotten screwed on voice charges. Really, there is no such thing as circuit switched networks anymore, so there is no technical reason to charge people by the minute. Google, get Skype/Google Talk/whatever on there, let us buy flat fee data plans, and put the bastards out of business already.
kgosser 17y ago
What a ridiculous article with antagonistic points. Terrible writing too.
bradgessler 17y ago
It would be interesting to see a decent unsubsidized $100 Android device hit the market. This would be inexpensive enough where a consumer could buy the phone outright and choose a telco without a long-term contract.
shareme 17y ago
You have to take this article with a large grain of salt as Google's obvious target was not non-US mobile telecoms but US telecoms And obviously caught in the middle is OEMs who attempted to do Mobile Telecoms bidding.. The other obvious target is China Mobile to derail their Ophone initiative
scotty79 17y ago
Other Android phones are to Nexus One as Firefox is to Chrome. If Google does the same thing as you do it doesn't mean it doesn't love you anymore. It still will cooperate with you and it still will pay you. It just wants to try out some things but they don't want to force you to try it for them.
Zak 17y ago
The mobile providers are being pushed in to being dumb pipes essentially like ISPs and I'm supposed to feel sorry for them? How is this anything but good for consumers, and fair for the mobile industry?
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txxxxd 17y ago
This guy doesn't understand the industry he's writing about. Telcos benefit by not having the overhead of advertising and supporting phones. They make their money selling services not phones (hence the heavy subsidies.) Manufacturers benefit by the popularity of the Android platform. It's easy to get people to switch to your hardware if they already know how the OS works and can use all their existing apps.
- seldo 17y ago
  Well, there's two side to that. The fragmentation of the mobile industry is the problem that Android was built to solve. However, Google getting directly into the business of making and selling handsets means the playing field is no longer level. That was the author's point, at least before he went off the rails and started off-handedly claiming that global warming is a hoax.
jsz0 17y ago
I wouldn't even consider a third Google Android handset in the future. HTC (and others) are burning too many bridges not getting updates out the door fast enough. I can't even run most of Google's new Android first party apps on my phone because I'm stuck with Android 1.5 and Sprint/HTC won't commit to any time table on an update. "2010" is as specific as they want to get. Android 3.x may be out before I even get 2.x. Good work guys. Great end user experience. Maybe Google did some shady stuff here but the third party handset makers screwed themselves too.
- gamble 17y ago
  I suspect that the motivation for an official 'Google Phone' is to provide at least one model that's guaranteed to get firmware updates in a timely fashion. With luck, it will pressure the other handset manufacturers to provide the same service.
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msbhvn 17y ago
So Apple gets attacked for not allowing their OS to run on non-Apple hw and Google gets attacked for allowing their OS to run on non-Google hardware? (I realize they're actually being criticized for now having their own device here, but just another perspective). I guess you could just not have your own hardware, since that's working so well for WinMo.
pkulak 17y ago
All another company needs to do is build a better phone and they'll have all the press again. Without Google's (free, by the way) OS, Motorola would be just about dead by now. And I don't think Sony Ericson or LG had some great mobile OS in the works either. Google may have single-handedly saved a half dozen companies from being eaten alive by Apple later this year when the AT&T exclusivity runs out and all we every hear is how Google is screwing over it's partners by having the gall to have an HTC phone Google branded and sold online.

70 points by benpbenp 17y ago

So, I'm kind of torn here. We're watching Google ascend to a position where they can bend numerous markets to their whim, but they aren't really cheating the consumers at all. If anything, they've been great to us. Beyond that, as a college kid with an interest in distributed systems/networks, I should probably be angling to try to work there someday. But still, I'm scared, because it's hard to trust a company that big to do no evil. Am I just being paranoid? (Not a rhetorical question)

ytinas 17y ago
No, not at all. Worse, Google is a public company, toiling under the requirement (by law no less) to ever increase share holder value. If Google found itself as the main (or sole) player in the cell market there would be a very obvious way to dramatically increase share holder value. And if they play the game properly they will also use this time of dominance to set up so many blocks to market entry that no one will be able to easily do anything about it.
- rms 17y ago
  I don't think that's true. Google's multi-class stock system makes them less subject to the immediate whims of the shareholders. Google's main strategy now is to make the internet better. Anything that improves the internet makes them more money. Cell phones are the internet. So if Google improves the cell phone marketplace, they make more money. Google taking advantage of a cell phone monopoly is unlikely if it takes away value from consumers.
  - ytinas 17y ago
    Have you read some of the early writings of Bill Gates? It can be difficult to reconcile that with some of the things he did with his company. Maybe Google's main strategy today is to make the Internet better and maybe today providing less value to the customers goes against their goals, but I suspect they're going to exist for a long time. What would make them more money in 15 years when they've killed off every competitor in the space (they may not do this, but they could. They have the resources)? You have very high expectations of people you don't know, and who wont remain in their current positions forever.
  - JadeNB 17y ago
    > Cell phones are the internet. What?
    - btilly 17y ago
      In large parts of the world most people access the internet over their phone, not a computer. For example India. Even here in the USA people are moving towards using their phone as a primary way to connect with services delivered over the internet.
      - JadeNB 17y ago
        Sure, I would have bought some statement like “For many people, their cell phones are the way they access the Internet”; but “cell phones are the Internet” seems bizarre. I didn't know that about India! When I was last there, it was all still Internet cafés. (Well, it was 8 years ago, so I guess it's no surprise that a lot has changed—besides which, I get the impression that the current generation is a lot quicker than Americans to pick up on new tech trends as they become available.)
        rms 17y ago
        I meant what I said. I think it only sounds bizarre because you are thinking of the internet as something that is accessed rather than something that exists. Wikipedia defines the Internet as "a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide." Surely a cell phone is one of those interconnected computer networks.
        JadeNB 17y ago
        > I think it only sounds bizarre because you are thinking of the internet as something that is accessed rather than something that exists. Yes, you are mostly right. More precisely, I think of the Internet as consisting of the data on it rather than the machinery that pushes that data around, and this does explain most of why I didn't expect the wording of your comment. Still: > Surely a cell phone is one of those interconnected computer networks. Yes, I agree! However, it seems to me that that would be better expressed as kl4m did (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1047752 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1047752), possibly with ⊆ in place of ∈.
- jambalaya 17y ago
  Until the next Google?
  - ytinas 17y ago
    Until now every company has had a weakness. Namely, dominance in some other market could be used to undercut them on price. The way to battle such companies has been to undermine their dominant market, or use the same strategy with a different market. Advertising is so unquantifiable at the moment that you can't undermine Google's market by simply selling advertising more cheaply. You could try to make a better search, but at some point Google wont be so depending on search for their ad revenue. The thing that is scary about Google is they have unlimited pockets. They can just continue throwing money away until they've taken over every market they care to. And then they can recoup those losses...
    - jnovek 17y ago
      Substitute Google with Microsoft and the products with MS products (say, Windows and Office) and you would have a common doomsday monopoly prediction ca. 1998. You can probably do the same with IBM before MS, but I'm too young to know. 20 years from now you'll wonder what you were so afraid of. Google is in its golden age, but it won't last forever.
      - ytinas 17y ago
        But MS had exactly the weakness I was talking about. If someone gives away their OS for free what will you do? Giving away advertising for free wont affect anything.
        angelbob 17y ago
        Presumably they have a weakness. As you say, it's hard to quantify what they're doing, but that just means we don't have an easy way to figure it out. It still has statistics, limits and numbers, even if only their accountants have a good handle on what those are.
lawn 17y ago
A pretty good point against Google is their user support which isn't that good. I've never been in contact with them personally but I've read a fair amount of complaints. Especially with adwords it's hard to get a fair response from Google.
gaius 17y ago
they aren't really cheating the consumers at all. If anything, they've been great to us The thing is this: the relationship that exists between me and T-mobile is, I pay them money and they provide me with voice and data and BlackBerry services. Now I'm obviously just one individual, but I am fairly representative of a high-value subset of T-mobile's customer base and as a collective, T-mobile's interests are well aligned with our own. They aren't going to screw me because in doing so they'd screw us (e.g. all BB owners) and we'd migrate en-masse to Vodafone. The relationship that exists between me and Google is that they provide me with free services so long as I and those like me engage in behaviors that are beneficial to their advertisers. It's difficult as an end user to get support from Google because they don't really care; they'd care only if their quality of customer service could affect my purchasing decisions with their advertisers. If people who couldn't get tech support from Google for their phones switched to Bing for search maybe they'd care, but I doubt anyone does that...
- btilly 17y ago
  Not exactly. The relationship you have with T-mobile is that they have signed you to a contract that locks you in to their service. At every turn T-mobile's goal is to lock you in, and once you're locked in they don't care about you. By contrast Google sets things up so that you can switch at any time, and they constantly have to keep you happy.
  - gaius 17y ago
    That's not really true, tho'. Come contract renewal time they are very accomodating. Or call them up and get through to Customer Retention and again, they'll bend over backwards. But my point stands. T-mobile is interested in keeping me happy, over the long term. Google is interested in keeping its advertisers happy. Given the choice between you or I and them, it will always choose them. That's why it wants all your data, even if they don't sell it directly, it is to monetize it.
    - InclinedPlane 17y ago
      Well sure. They'll seem like they'll do anything for you. But if you look at the cold, hard numbers you'll realize that the average phone contract sums out to maybe $1-2k over its life, with a pretty hefty profit margin. Of course they're going to "bend over backwards" for you at contract time. The used car salesman does the same thing. The rubes fall for the shtick nearly every time and the salesman laughs all the way to the bank. Keep in mind that these are the same folks who markup a service that costs practically nothing to run to rates 4x higher than the cost of transmitting data from the Hubble space telescope.

RyanMcGreal 17y ago

I can never tell how much of a given Register article is prescient contrarianism and how much is straight trolling.

j_b_f 17y ago
Yeah, it's a little over the top. I don't like how articles like this always fail to put forward the theory that maybe Google did the N1 to avoid Windows Mobile's fate by creating an in-production reference platform that commits them to backwards compatibility. It probably won't prevent further fragmentation, but it's worth a shot. Also, it's not Google's fault that the other Android devices suck ass.
drats 17y ago
Orlowski's articles are often blatant trolls, this one is way out there claiming that the mobile operators who've had us over barrels for so long should be felt sorry for because they can't break the net. Nobody is stopping them making a video on demand service, people are stopping them from making a video on demand that has priority and blocks others. And calling all the civil society groups that fought for net neutrality Google sockpuppets is a bit much. He's siding with all the other players to be a troll but we side with Google not because we love them but because we don't want the carriers to be anything more than ISPs. They are simply too stupid to manage it, look at SMS data transfer still costing four times more than data transfer to the Hubble telescope. Whereas you have Google pushing open jabber chat protocols and then building Wave on top of them. Who do you trust, a bunch of dying lock-in mongers with a track record of squeezing everything they can out of you and the troll-jester Orlowski or Google which has a decent track record open sourcing most of their stuff and adding value? As someone who has suffered iPhone lock-in and incredibly poor customer service (3G on my 3G iphone has never worked from day one and the carrier and Apple refused to do anything about it - even suggesting I "turn off 3G to abate the problem" WTF) I can't wait for unlocked no-contract Linux phones to become the norm and just wipe them all out. And I don't think Google cares about "the mobile industry" either, they can burn bridges there because that industry doesn't work as a block (there is no honour among thieves) and they can always find one to make the hardware for them.
- 17y ago

SwellJoe 17y ago

Since we've all been screwed by the mobile industry for the entirety of its existence, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel indignant towards Google for pissing off said industry. There are very few industries more arrogant and abusive than the telcos (at least in the US; I dunno about the UK), and if Google wants to take their place, I'm all for it. Instead of playing the consumer-screwing game better (like Apple did with the iPhone and its subsidized/locked-in model) Google is leaving those decisions up to the consumer and giving them a fair deal all around. My impression is that Google looked at the existing phones and the way they were being sold (exclusive to specific carriers, and used to lock consumers in, just like all prior phones) and felt that it just wasn't doing the job the way they'd planned. Android had a reason for existing, and it was to break the logjam in the mobile industry so that Google could get on with the business of monetizing the hell out of mobile users. Since the old players decided to use Android to play by the old rules, Google simply reminded them of the way "open" is supposed to work. The play here is not for Google to become a traditional mobile device provider or to become a mobile service provider (though they'll touch on both). The play is to make the mobile web standard enough and good enough and pervasive enough to where Google can work their money-making magic there. Telcos are standing (aggressively) in the way of that, and the device makers remain willing partners in those plans.

joe_the_user 17y ago
The article is kind-of trolling against Google really. The idea that Googlenet means Google isn't respecting net neutrality is a sham. Other operators could create something like Googlenet for some internal purpose. They just extract rent from the public switching networking their operating. Sure, Google is very much about making money, it's just it makes money providing value-added-services (search+advertising) rather than extracting rent on anything that travels through it's pipes. It has the means to be the one who provides these value-add-services and it intends to keep those means. But the way it does this is increasing the quality and quantity of products - a good thing for us. A story where Google is preventing someone else from providing more would get my attention.
ubernostrum 17y ago
So your argument, in a nutshell, is "two wrongs do indeed make a right"?

sethg 17y ago

Awww. Do the poor wittle cellphone manufacturers have their poor wittle feelings hurt? Here, have a blankie. Really, I’m having trouble seeing what the complaint is behind all the bombast. The author doesn’t claim that Google is selling the phones at a loss or doing anything else that would raise an antitrust issue. Carriers can offer the Nexus alongside other manufacturers’ Android phones and, for that matter, the ten thousand other cellphone models that clog the market. Most consumers will choose among those models based on prices and features, not brand name. (Microsoft sells keyboards and mice under its own brand name, but they’ve hardly put the other keyboard and mouse manufacturers out of business.) So where’s the problem? That competition might reduce the profit margins of cellphone manufacturers? From my side of the salesman’s counter, that’s anything but a problem.

nihilocrat 17y ago
My first thoughts as well. It's about time someone with actual clout gave the mobile phone cartel the shaft. Yes, it's a cartel, when you pay $.50 a text message off your plan with all carriers there's gotta be some price fixing behind the scenes.
- dfragnito 17y ago
  Not sure having one mobile provider will result in a reduction of price. It's free now but you will pay later.
- gaius 17y ago
  Yes but who really does that? Except when roaming. Even a basic plan will have like a thousand texts a month.
  - dpritchett 17y ago
    I pay for texts on a per-message basis. Single texts are a quarter or so and the smallest minimum text plan is about $5/mo. I don't send 20 texts in a month so I just forego the service altogether. I still send and receive the occasional text but I don't care enough to pay for the package. It helps that I have a 5GB smartphone data plan.

eli 17y ago

The degree to which Google is "shaking up" the mobile industry has been vastly overstated by the media. I think this is mostly due to the crazy rumors that were flying before the launch (e.g. it was going to use SIP for calls, or that it would be massively subsidized/free even without a plan). What Google actually offered with the N1 is not very revolutionary. Selling unlocked phones online isn't new. Nor is having phones that run on your choice of US carriers (hello, Blackberry). Really, the only innovation here is at T-Mobile, which has calling plans that are a little bit cheaper each month if you bring your own phone instead of having them subsidize one.

dhyasama 17y ago

Does anyone really believe the companies that were supposedly shafted were surprised when Google released their own phone? I knew the Google phone was in the works long before any of the other phones came out and I don't have connections at Google or telcos. I'd bet money the device manufacturers and the the telcos were well aware of the Google phone when they agreed to work with Android.

coffeemug 17y ago

How much the consumers have gotten screwed on the phones is peanuts compared to how much the consumers have gotten screwed on voice charges. Really, there is no such thing as circuit switched networks anymore, so there is no technical reason to charge people by the minute. Google, get Skype/Google Talk/whatever on there, let us buy flat fee data plans, and put the bastards out of business already.

kgosser 17y ago

What a ridiculous article with antagonistic points. Terrible writing too.

bradgessler 17y ago

It would be interesting to see a decent unsubsidized $100 Android device hit the market. This would be inexpensive enough where a consumer could buy the phone outright and choose a telco without a long-term contract.

shareme 17y ago

You have to take this article with a large grain of salt as Google's obvious target was not non-US mobile telecoms but US telecoms And obviously caught in the middle is OEMs who attempted to do Mobile Telecoms bidding.. The other obvious target is China Mobile to derail their Ophone initiative

scotty79 17y ago

Other Android phones are to Nexus One as Firefox is to Chrome. If Google does the same thing as you do it doesn't mean it doesn't love you anymore. It still will cooperate with you and it still will pay you. It just wants to try out some things but they don't want to force you to try it for them.

Zak 17y ago

The mobile providers are being pushed in to being dumb pipes essentially like ISPs and I'm supposed to feel sorry for them? How is this anything but good for consumers, and fair for the mobile industry?

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txxxxd 17y ago

This guy doesn't understand the industry he's writing about. Telcos benefit by not having the overhead of advertising and supporting phones. They make their money selling services not phones (hence the heavy subsidies.) Manufacturers benefit by the popularity of the Android platform. It's easy to get people to switch to your hardware if they already know how the OS works and can use all their existing apps.

seldo 17y ago
Well, there's two side to that. The fragmentation of the mobile industry is the problem that Android was built to solve. However, Google getting directly into the business of making and selling handsets means the playing field is no longer level. That was the author's point, at least before he went off the rails and started off-handedly claiming that global warming is a hoax.

jsz0 17y ago

I wouldn't even consider a third Google Android handset in the future. HTC (and others) are burning too many bridges not getting updates out the door fast enough. I can't even run most of Google's new Android first party apps on my phone because I'm stuck with Android 1.5 and Sprint/HTC won't commit to any time table on an update. "2010" is as specific as they want to get. Android 3.x may be out before I even get 2.x. Good work guys. Great end user experience. Maybe Google did some shady stuff here but the third party handset makers screwed themselves too.

gamble 17y ago
I suspect that the motivation for an official 'Google Phone' is to provide at least one model that's guaranteed to get firmware updates in a timely fashion. With luck, it will pressure the other handset manufacturers to provide the same service.

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msbhvn 17y ago

So Apple gets attacked for not allowing their OS to run on non-Apple hw and Google gets attacked for allowing their OS to run on non-Google hardware? (I realize they're actually being criticized for now having their own device here, but just another perspective). I guess you could just not have your own hardware, since that's working so well for WinMo.

pkulak 17y ago

All another company needs to do is build a better phone and they'll have all the press again. Without Google's (free, by the way) OS, Motorola would be just about dead by now. And I don't think Sony Ericson or LG had some great mobile OS in the works either. Google may have single-handedly saved a half dozen companies from being eaten alive by Apple later this year when the AT&T exclusivity runs out and all we every hear is how Google is screwing over it's partners by having the gall to have an HTC phone Google branded and sold online.