I agree: Carrier and vendor relationships are the root cause of the problem, not incompatible chips or anything. Maybe I should have used a different word than

I agree: Carrier and vendor relationships are the root cause of the problem, not incompatible chips or anything. Maybe I should have used a different word than hardware, but I'll stand by that word rather than replace it with some airy abstract phrase like total product experience. When I say "Google is now in the hardware business" what I mean is: The average customer buys the physical phone, the OS, the carrier, the contract, and the warranty as part of one big package. Unless the customer is among the 0.0001% of customers who read Make magazine, they don't buy the hardware and software separately, nor -- in the USA -- do they get to independently shop for a carrier. They buy a package, and they call that package a phone. They want the whole package to work and be supported. If the new version of the Maps app doesn't run on their phone, my guess is that this average customer doesn't say gosh, the hardware is compatible, the software could theoretically work, and the open-source maintainers are on my side, but it's too bad about my platform's dysfunctional carrier-vendor relationship. They say "gosh, my phone sucks now". It's a problem for everyone. In Apple-land it manifests as "the iPhone has terrible reception and doesn't support tethering", though of course the iPhone hardware and software offer pretty good reception and do support tethering; it's AT&T that sucks. In Android-land it manifests as platform fragmentation: There is no one thing called Android; instead there are half a dozen little Androids no two of which are alike.