14 ms·

Who will steal Android from Google?

183 points by aberoham 9y ago

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
I think Steve's underestimating the power of Google's control over OEMs here. Every OEM wants to get rid of Google's hold over them, but how do they do it without putting their entire corporation at risk? Google has already shown they'll ban your entire company from Google Apps access if you try to produce a single Android device without Google Apps. So any company who wants to exclude Google puts their entire mobile product line at risk on this play. It'd be hard to see anything coming of this unless multiple manufacturers can agree to make the jump together, creating a platform large enough that even Google has to support it for their own market share needs (which means, this group must include Samsung, who's hedged their bets on this sort of thing but seems too scared to make the jump). And even then, this only remains an option as long as the Pixel remains niche. If the Pixel gains an iPhone-like market share amongst the broader range of Android devices, Google can mostly tell other manufacturers to screw off. His notions on cross-platform frameworks making a non-Android platform viable are spot on though. Not only through things like React Native, but PWAs, which Google is pretty bullish on itself, despite the fact that it may make Windows Mobile a viable idea again.
- jbob2000 9y ago
  To your point - software is king. Any two-bit electronics company can ship a phone, but it's a useless paper weight if it doesn't run the right software. iPhone is generally behind the curve when it comes to hardware specs, but nobody cares about that because iOS is such a strong platform.
  - lev99 9y ago
    iOS also seems to perform better with similar specs than Android.
    - pkage 9y ago
      Perks of not running everything in the JVM. Even though it's really fast at this point, it's still going to have more overhead than running apps natively.
      - lev99 9y ago
        Compiled code is faster than bytecode is faster than interpreters. It's not always true, but it's a good rule of thumb.
        candiodari 9y ago
        It's long established that Java's problem is not the JVM or bytecode but it's memory model. Java's bytecode execution speed in the JVM is good enough that it's on part with C, easily beating any language with even a slightly inefficient compiler, like Go or Haskell.
        ptx 9y ago
        Are you referring to the lack of value types? Or is there some more fundamental problem?
        candiodari 9y ago
        That's a decent part of it, but also the fact that in Java: class A { B b; } "b" will be a pointer, as opposed to "b" being contained within instances of class A.
      - enitihas 9y ago
        Android does not run anything on the JVM AFAIK.
      - vbezhenar 9y ago
        Does it matter when half of the apps are based on Cordova or React Native, running everything in the JavaScript VM and majority of the games are based on Unity running exactly the same C++ and C# code everywhere. It's not like some calendar app will have major performance gains with native code.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    And the "right" software is often controlled by one company. If you read a lot of reviews of Windows Phones, most reviewers seemed to more or less come to the same conclusion: That Windows was a faster, smoother OS, but that they had trouble going about their daily lives with it because it didn't have Gmail and the other five or six Google Apps they relied on. As long as the market share of any newcomer is low enough, Google can leave them out in the cold for app support (or intentionally interfere by blocking YouTube access, similar to what they did with Windows Mobile, and now Amazon's Echo and Fire platforms), and they'll die off for that reason alone. Whether it's an Android fork or a new OS like Tizen or some new Windows flavor, it won't beat Google unless it has the market share to force Google to support it with apps. And it's hard to get that market share without Google's support.
    - RestlessMind 9y ago
      > (or intentionally interfere by blocking YouTube access, similar to what they did with Windows Mobile, and now Amazon's Echo and Fire platforms), Nice spin there! Youtube was blocked on Windows Mobile because Microsoft blatantly blocked all the ads in violation of policy. If Microsoft was in the right here, we would have seen a lot more aggressive posturing from them instead of silent retreat. And for Amazon, it was a reaction to Amazon's decision not to sell Chromecast (and Nest devices). Amazon's excuse is that Google changed Chromecast APIs, which smells weak when you see other supported apps on Chromecast from Netflix, HBO, ESPN etc.
      - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
        You are definitely applying your own spin, to be sure. ;) Microsoft tried repeatedly to work with the YouTube team to comply with Google's ToS, but it was a moving target, Google kept changing their requirements until it was largely impossible to comply. The Amazon/Google spat goes back a lot further than that, which I've talked about a bit in other comments here.
      - saurik 9y ago
        If you look at the totality of the evidence, even in that one story (where Microsoft then built the app to Google's specifications, with ads, and then Google waited until they released it before blocking it again), the story looks so bad against Google that even some of the reasonable press was starting to notice and report the issue as Google toying with Microsoft. Here is a link to an overly-well-sourced comment I wrote on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14835776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14835776
  - tboyd47 9y ago
    This is Nintendo's same strategy, I believe.
  - hantusk 9y ago
    That iPhone is behind the curve on hardware specs is not really true. Their CPU+GPU is faster than anything else on the market. And in terms of other hardware (RAM, camera, sensors) I would still say it's arguable
    - coldtea 9y ago
      Actually the iPhone is only "behind the curve" in adopting new form factors. Regarding CPU and GPU power, camera quality, and new sensors and stuff, the iPhone has always been the machine to beat.
  - iainmerrick 9y ago
    iPhone is generally behind the curve when it comes to hardware specs Really? In all the benchmarks I've seen, the latest iPhones handily beat the latest Android phones. (And old iPhones remain usable longer than old Android phones.) Assuming the software doesn't get in the way, benchmarks are all about hardware, not software.
    - mattnewton 9y ago
      The numbers on the box may be lower (number of cores, ram size), but I agree, benchmarks usually show iPhone very competitive or in the lead.
    - wand3r 9y ago
      I couldnt immeadiately find a graph or data but potentially parent was talking about price v performance. The computer offerings historically have been behind the curve but I thought the iPhone performance was strong compared to the field. I would be happy to change my opinion with new information but I agree with you.
    - kerberos84 9y ago
      Given that those benchmarks running on operating systems, the software(OS) matters. >And old iPhones remain usable longer than old Android phones. It depends which Android phone you are comparing with. If you compare with a flagship, it should be head-to-head. But i think that is because of stability/efficiency of iOS over android.
      - iainmerrick 9y ago
        Given that those benchmarks running on operating systems, the software(OS) matters. No, if the OS significantly slows down a benchmark, it's a bad OS. Both Android and iOS are fine in this respect. (It's a bit fuzzier for graphics tests, I admit, where driver quality comes into play.)
      - jjrh 9y ago
        > But i think that is because of stability/efficiency of iOS over android. From what I understand iOS is pretty picky about background processes. Limit what can run in the background (and for how long) with android and you will probably get similar results.
  - zellyn 9y ago
    If by "generally behind the curve when it comes to hardware specs" you mean a generation and a half _ahead_, then yes.
- bluGill 9y ago
  Of course if google actually tries that there is an anti-trust lawsuit awaiting them, which will probably force google to spin off android. (this may require a change in US presidents but that happens all the time)
- ttflee 9y ago
  > any company who wants to exclude Google puts their entire mobile product line at risk on this play With the exception of China Inc. No place for Google so far.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    True, but that's solely because Google chose not to do business there. They left that opportunity open to other companies, which is why it's the only place competition really exists. That being said, while a Chinese manufacturer could try to branch out into the international market, that hasn't been working out for them so far. Huawei and Xiaomi have both pushed in that direction, but beyond limited success to begin with, now government entities are discouraging Chinese brands due to perceived cybersecurity risks. Whether those risks are overblown or not, it has severely hampered these companies' ability to branch out to the international consumer.
    - Oletros 9y ago
      And even they put Google services in their global ROM's. At least Xiaomi does
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  You overestimate how hard it is. Amazon did it, and the entire country of China did it out of necessity. As Amazon's ecosystem gains steam, there will be enough third party replacements for Google's apps that it will be easier for others to switch too.
  - product50 9y ago
    When are you seeing Amazon's Android ecosystem is gaining system? All they are doing is building their own apps on top of their implementation of Android. The rest of the apps are just being ported over from normal Android.
    - sounds 9y ago
      Well, it's gaining "steam," not "system," but I see it here: https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/blog/2018/with-homepod-apples-audio-ambitions-come-in-crystal-clear/ https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/blog/2018/with-homepod... day one pre-orders of HomePod were higher than all other smart speaker first day pre-orders, except Amazon’s Echo Dot
    - wlesieutre 9y ago
      Amazon's phone might have flopped, but they've eaten the Android tablet market. Google tried to make a "pure" android tablet with the Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Pixel C. The 7 was the only one of those with any success, and it's long gone. Tablets are either iPads, Surfaces, or Kindles now. I don't know what Android tablet would be in next place after the Kindle. If you count big phones with styluses, probably the Galaxy Note. I know the Samsung Galaxy Tab line exists but I've literally never seen one.
      - sbov 9y ago
        I think at least part of the death of the Nexus 7 is because Google seemed to have no interest in refreshing it. I was looking to upgrade mine a while back and the only thing available was the same old tablet. Google has a weird relationship with consumer devices. They release stuff, then seemingly completely abandon it for years. I don't know what exactly their goal is with some of these devices, but if e.g. Microsoft did the same thing with the XBox, they would never be where they are now.
- patmcguire 9y ago
  Best candidate is some Chinese OEM or tech titan like WeChat that has already done all the insane work it would take to replace the things Google holds hostage. Wouldn't necessarily be more open if it's WeChat, though.
lev99 9y ago
Microsoft invests heavily in Xamarin, but I haven't seen an amazing cross platform app written in it yet, even though it's four years older than React Native. React Native is really good, but I wounder how many developers will be able to move from OOP or Web development to Declarative Programming. I think we'll continue to see a lot of Kotlin and Swift developers for the next decade, as both languages are still attracting many new developers. Android and iOS have been playing nicely with the compatibility layer, but could potential break it if they begin to lose control of the market place. Developing in React Native, while having lower costs, is still more risky than having two native development teams.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Microsoft feels like it always is moving towards a grand unifying vision, but it is always taking longer than you'd expect. Xamarin is still one of many heads of the great .NET hydra. Microsoft's been making big strides to tame them all under .NET Standard, but there's still plenty of work to go.
  - lev99 9y ago
    imo Microsoft has a problem of trying to force technology when it just isn't elegant engineering. Unifying .NET is both an engineer's fool's errand and one of the most obvious things things they can do to improve their business. I was writing some dotnet core 2.0 code the other day and was shocked to find it was missing an officially supported odbc as well as many of the System.Data classes that use to be a big workhorse for developers. .NET has serious problems. Microsoft invested in other technologies that were obviously doomed from an outsider's perspective for far longer than they should. Windows phone and Bing being the two biggest and most obvious stubborn failures.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      Bing is hardly a failure, nearly every search engine that isn't Google has switched to it as a data source, and it's market share is growing. Bing's at a third of US search (according to Microsoft, at least): https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/bing-is-bigger-than-you-think-microsoft-boasts-at-33-of-us-searches/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/bing-is-bigger-than-... A lot of companies now compete with Google in one or several markets, and being forced to include Google Search would be fairly painful for a lot of them, so Bing tends to be an immediate contender for anyone who isn't Google trying to integrate search capabilities. Obviously, a fair segment of their market share is just "Bing is default on Edge/IE, and Edge/IE is default on Windows" as well.
digi_owl 9y ago
None most likely. The closest we came was when Amazon unveiled their Fire variant. And the Google response to that was to move development of anything user facing out of AOSP. Compiling AOSP today will result in something that look and behave not much different from late 2.x Android.
- kshingne 9y ago
  -->Compiling AOSP today will result in something that look and behave not much different from late 2.x Android. Any examples?.As a developer, the one's I think of are location apis (still available in the AOSP, but requires much more code to get right than the google play services version). And the look and feel does not depend on the play services sdk.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Before Android 2.3.7, AOSP included Google Search, Google Books, Google Talk, the Android Music app, the Android Launcher, Settings, Contacts, Calendar. In Android 8.0, AOSP does not include any of these anymore. In Android 8.0, you need to use Google Play services to get Location, Stepcounter, any device sensor, recent TLS on pre-8.0 devices, any of the above apps, background job scheduling (the new JobScheduler only works on 8.0 or Google Play services), and so on. I've written apps that don't rely on Play Services, I had to reverse engineer and clone half of Play Services to even get a semi-working version. Nowadays, the source code of a new Android version is released months after the binaries are released, and over half a year before the first binary beta releases are released (Android P's first beta binaries are out today, the source code is expected in december). You can already build apps for Android P, making use of the new features - if Google gives you the required code, which they only provide to themselves and a selected few developers. Google makes it as hard as possible to compete fairly, and this has already caught the attention of the EU. And then, of course, there's the fact that the Chromecast SDK requires Play Services (so you can't use Chromecast on Kindle devices), and that receiving Chromecasts is even entirely impossible at the current time for non-Google devices (these are the reasons why Amazon doesn't support Chromecast, but is instead together with Netflix trying to establish a cross-platform API that can use Amazon's sticks, Miracast devices, Chromecast, and many other devices). Google has done everything they could to be as anticompetitive as possible, and of course this will lead to legal action. Potentially half of the Android ecosystem at this point may be based on criminally anticompetitive actions.
RestlessMind 9y ago
I keep reading about Fuchsia. Maybe, that is Google's answer to the messy Android stack? I mean, why invest in cleaning up your stack or having a better cross-platform dev environment, when you can just have a clean new OS?
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Even I have high hopes for Fuchsia. It seems like it's doing a lot of things right from the ground level, particularly in terms of security. But from a business standpoint, it's a huge risk. If Google wants to get OEMs to switch from an established, widely popular platform to a new one, they're going to need one heck of a big carrot. It's likely Google would retain more control with Fuchsia, since giving OEMs control of experience, security, and updates is largely responsible for many of Android's woes, and OEMs will be resistant to that. Google may have a much easier time retaining it's control under Android than trying to push a platform switch, which could actually, lead to OEMs switching to a different company's platform instead.
  - ethbro 9y ago
    To me, re-architecting the Google / OEM split benefits both (disclosure: I haven't followed exactly what they're aiming for with Fuchsia). If it becomes possible to update to new Android features and security patches without breaking OEM overware, then OEMs no longer have to dedicate teams to rewriting their crap codebases. Which means they can put all those developers on features instead. Which is what they've always been interested in and (arguably) better at in the first place.
- kibwen 9y ago
  I'm also intrigued by Fuchsia, but it doesn't look like it's intended as a smartphone OS. Even if it was, without access to the Android app store it'll be no more successful than Windows Phone or any of the other upstarts (and something like a hypothetical Android emulation layer sounds like murder for battery life).
  - simmons 9y ago
tootie 9y ago
I think a lot of this is objectively wrong. Any of the Cordova-based platforms (including Ionic, Framework 7 and some others) were built to support every platform including niche players and it still never got much attention from developers. Xamarin as well was able to target Windows Phone and it didn't help. There are already big investments from Android competitors like Samsung in their mobile platforms and they absolutely suck. Even then, a solid cross-platform dev platform like React Native is actually a boon for Android which is second fiddle to Apple when it comes to premium apps. Right now, anyone looking to reach profitability will go iOS first, then web, then Android. Making the cost of bridging the gap to Android smaller will only increase adoption.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  They are pretty big in enterprise apps, usually targeted to employees. Despite my opinions regarding native UIs, the fact is that we are yet to get pure native apps contracts, they are either Cordova/Xamarin/Qt or plain web based. The majority of enterprise shops do not care about native UI/UX.
  - tootie 9y ago
    I'm working on an enterprise app for Android using Xamarin and we are taking the UX semi-seriously. App looks and performs fine. I find the concept of "native look and feel" to be extremely nebulous and not particularly valuable. Apps should look good and be responsive and I don't notice or care when they look native.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      I find the "native look and feel" concept quite valuable, but my experience in enterprise, it that most departments either want a "department/corporate look and feel" or "whatever works look and feel". Thanks for your Xamarin feedback.
- NotSteveYegge 9y ago
  This is exactly why I said I think cross-platform is good for Android, even though they don't seem to think it is.
braderhart 9y ago
Vulkan and Wayland are going to steal Android away soon, because you will no longer need it.
- loxs 9y ago
  (laughing emoji)
- gregknicholson 9y ago
  Seriously though, I'm glad I'm able to opt out of all this channelsy advertising-at-me business. I don't want to be a consumer in this market. I just want communication tools. I'm looking forward to receiving my Librem 5, and I'm pleased Lineage continues producing phone software intended for users, not advertisers.
roel_v 9y ago
Isn't the complaint about Android as a dev platform related to the frequent vs infrequent developer article that's now also on the first page? Sure programming Android is yucky (I struggled with the flavor/build/whatever hierarchy he mentions just this morning, and it's a mess, and even the examples in the official docs are incomprehensible), but so is programming on every mature platform. I write MFC code pretty much every day, and I dig down into win32 at least weekly. Ya it ain't pretty, but I paid the learning price 15 years ago, and now I know every nook and cranny and I can just get things done without googling every little thing, and chasing down if that answer on a forum from 2013 still applies (or is no longer a 'best practice' o how I loathe that term, but I digress...) And sure, the 'getting started' examples of every new framework or platform that promises to fix the warts of the previous one look compelling - but then you start building actual applications, and people find out they need to add this and that and by the time it matures we're 5 years on; and it has accumulated just as much (different, but just as much) cruft as the ones before it.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  I lost track with MFC during the early 2000, but from the documentation, it hasn't been rebooted half as much as Android has. And if the Java layer is already a mess, with the documentation scattered all over the web instead of Android docs, those of us that adventure in NDK could use a quote from Dante.
deleted 9y ago
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ozten 9y ago
This conflates Android the operating system with Android's SDK. Let's say ReactNative wins and developers create apks that are mostly ReactNative... Google still wins. They don't care what an App is written in and customers can't tell either. Android the OS is pretty safe, as cyanogen.com valiant run at Google from this angle proves out.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >This conflates Android the operating system with Android's SDK. Let's say ReactNative wins and developers create apks that are mostly ReactNative... Google still wins. They don't care what an App is written in and customers can't tell either. Which means other vendors can far more easily keep all their apps and move to a non-Google controlled mobile OS of their own.
  - HillaryBriss 9y ago
    I hear what you're saying, but how much more easy does this make it to move to a non-Google OS? The thing is that with Google Play Services libraries and the Google Play Store, Google has a really strong lock on a huge collection of apps out there. Using something like ReactNative on top of that stuff kind of seems like a baby step away from Google, but there's still so much Google control to eliminate.
- NotSteveYegge 9y ago
  It's not as simple as you might think. If Android OS becomes the plumbing, and Facebook controls the developer experience, then it levels the playing field for a competing hardware/software platform (e.g. Windows). It makes it harder for Google to "control" the platform. It's analogous to how the browser came along and turned the desktop OS into plumbing for a lot of people. My wife uses a Mac but she really has no idea that it's a Mac. She only uses the browser, so she could easily switch to Windows. Apple has really no hooks into her at this point, and that's an uncomfortable position for Apple (or any desktop manufacturer) to be in. Google _needs_ to maintain control of the developer experience. In my opinion they should add a TypeScript option to Flutter, embed the v8 javascript engine into Android, and support Flutter with JavaScript as a first-class citizen on the Android stack. They should start this work yesterday.
loxs 9y ago
Off-topic: can someone explain what is it that is so great about Medium, so that Steve finds it necessary to praise them? To me (as a reader) it's just a blog engine with horrible user experience. Of course, with time I have come to accept it as it is, so I don't get angry every time, but I still find it horrible.
- rabidonrails 9y ago
  From a reader perspective (can't speak to distribution as the writer etc...), a Medium hosted post usually means that I'm not going to be bombarded with banners, ads, mailing lists etc. I might immediately click out of it, but the barrier for me to click is lower initially.
  - NotSteveYegge 9y ago
    Still better than Blogspot. Trust me on this one.
- x0x0 9y ago
  Publishing to the internet, particularly nicely formatted and with a nice editor, is still a pita. A big pita. Worse if you're Steve Yegge and anything you write can get a hundred thousand visitors. I ran a wordpress blog for a while. What a godawful piece of shit that is. Security critical updates all the time, and HAHAHAHA, they regularly break themes. I have no idea why, but probably because wordpress refuses to create a nice them api so they can try and gpl every theme. Plus it's slow. Plus it's difficult to secure. I had originally used a hosted wp instance until that got repeatedly hacked. Then I ran it myself. Yuck. Then I used octopress for a while. I had to configure nginx and ssl and then deal with things like figuring out why pygments broke. Something went wrong with python which obviously I'm using inside by ruby blog engine. Mathjax deprecated their cdn and I'm still too lazy to go fix it. Medium, imo, creates a nice solution where (1) writing is pleasant, (2) publishing is easy and comes out nicely formatted, and (3) when you're busy, you spend the majority of your time writing instead of doing ancillary things.
  - 9y ago
TuringNYC 9y ago
I appreciate having multiple players in the marketplace, it creates healthy competition and keeps progress brisk. My bigger fear isn't someone else stealing Android from Google, but Google stealing Android from Google (e.g., via insufficient investment, insufficient maintenance, confusing strategy, etc.) There are many examples, but some that come to mind are Google letting Google Voice near-die via insufficient maintenance/investment. Or Google literally giving away the opportunity they had in capturing chat (via Google Chat) due to a confusing strategy (Google Chat/Hangouts/Duo/Allo/app-of-the-day)
- gman83 9y ago
  They're literally going to do this with Fuchsia I predict. ChromeOS is there too already the tablet space is confusing.
bane 9y ago
At some point, Google is going to screw up. This will create business opportunity for anybody who's put a few years and a few hundred million into a strategic replacement. Android is already creaking at the seams in certain places, it won't be a huge surprise if some use-case comes along that invalidates enough of the platform that Google will have to replace it. Don't forget, among the companies that are sinking money into replacing Android is also Google. They're preparing for a fight. Times when OS's were fundamentally replaced because of industry paradigm shifts: - Unix -> Linux - MS-DOS -> Windows - Windows 3.x -> Windows NT - ProDOS -> GUI ProDOSs - Android with a Blackberry clickwheel interface -> Android with a touchscreen - Windows CE -> every other mobile platform - Mac OS -> OS X - OS/2 -> Windows NT - CP/M -> MS-DOS and so on.
- Froyoh 9y ago
  As for the Mac it seems we've come a full circle: Mac OS -> OS X -> macOS
  - dfee 9y ago
    For now, your point stands only from a naming convention perspective. However, if iOS apps do come to the next version of MacOS, we might be on the verge of delineating Mac OS X and MacOS into truly-separate generations.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Actually it is more than that. On the Mac culture, UNIX is only an implementation detail, most users don't care one second it is there. Not even Mac developers, those that actually target Mac users, not using it as a workaround to avoid dealing with Linux/BSD issues on laptops.
- adventured 9y ago
  > At some point, Google is going to screw up. Microsoft screwed up on numerous occasions with Windows. Once the monopoly was in place, that simply didn't matter so much. Consumer behavior reinforces the monopoly even in the case of screwing up: people very aggressively stick with what they know. The same will be true of Google-Android. Getting consumers to switch is extremely difficult. Competing with Android is extremely expensive. Delivering your Android killer at exactly the right time, with a vast improvement over Android, with the right marketing hit, with the right partners, with the right hardware - good luck, it's not going to happen.
royjacobs 9y ago
Isn't the whole point of these competing stacks not to provide an alternative to Android but to provide an alternative to all phone OSes? The idea being that you can write your application 'once' and it will be available on Android and iOS (and, as a comedy option, Windows Phone I guess)? If you look at these toolkits in that light then their existence is justified without it being a nail in Android's coffin, so to speak. Not that the underlying tooling can't be better, but devs are moving towards cross-platform toolkits precisely because they are cross-platform, not because Android is terrible.
YaxelPerez 9y ago
Isn't Google developing Fuschia OS to replace Android and Chrome OS?
HillaryBriss 9y ago
Another great, highly opinionated, but still great, Yegge post. My favorite quotations: 1. "Android’s dev stack is the world’s biggest poo sandwich" 2. "And Android? Yep. It’s the biggest poo sandwich of them all." 3. "...there are two Android APIs for getting mouse-click events on a scrolling list, but one of those APIs doesn’t work on LG. I mean come on." 4. "I love Kotlin; it’s the future of Java. But let’s face it: It’s not where the mobile market is headed. " 5. ... the Android org at Google is not sure whether cross-platform is good for them or bad for them, but that they are leaning towards “bad” 6. "most of the big shops are aggressively dumping [the android gradle build system] in favor of Buck — Facebook’s Android build system. Google is chasing a dying strategy here." 7. "guess who else is making a big play with a competing [android app] store? You guessed it: Jeff Bezos" 8. "if you’re locked in a fierce competitive race ... and need to launch faster, you should probably go with something other than Android Native ... Among the cross-platform options, React Native is looking like a winner" 9. "there are a lot of big sharks circling the Android boat. Google needs to be careful."
yla92 9y ago
> The irony being that most of the big shops are aggressively dumping it in favor of Buck — Facebook’s Android build system. Google is chasing a dying strategy here. Igave it a try to a "small" project and there weren't any noticeable advantage over Gradle (and given that Instant Run is working quite well, it was really buggy when it comes out). I know for a fact that aside from Facebook, Uber uses it and comes out with a nice Gradle plugin for Buck called OkBuck[0]. I wonder what other big shops use as well. And I would like to know if anyone here has used it and saw any dramatic advantage over Gradle and worth investing time integrating Buck into current projects. [0]: https://github.com/uber/okbuck https://github.com/uber/okbuck
- jmull 9y ago
  I think of Instant Run as the "crash" button.
- merb 9y ago
  Well Google has their alternative to "Buck" aswell, called Bazel: https://docs.bazel.build/versions/master/tutorial/android-app.html https://docs.bazel.build/versions/master/tutorial/android-ap...
  - izacus 9y ago
    Internally Google doesn't use Gradle at all (never did) so I have no idea what the author tried to tell with his paragraph. The fact that iOS is successful without a comparable build system (everything is bound to Xcode projects and tooling based on that undocumented changing format), makes me think he's overestimating importance of the build system.
    - NotSteveYegge 9y ago
      Android uses Gradle as its default build system. It gets extremely slow on large applications like Uber, Facebook, Nest, Snapchat, etc. The enterprise customers all complain to the Android tools team about it, and they throw a ton of work into trying to speed it up. And it gets more and more complicated. Meanwhile, Uber (their marquee Gradle customer) just switched to Buck -- I don't think Google even knows this yet. The build system in Android is a huge pain point for the dev stack. It's a big part of why things like React Native are gaining traction. Your comparison to iOS is basically invalid/irrelevant, because iOS doesn't have the same legacy packaging issues (APK) as Android has. Android's build is actually quite complicated, more so due to the device proliferation, and it's getting worse over time. Hope that helps. I'd be happy to answer more detailed questions about why it's so bad, since I've worked on it extensively in the past.
byron_fast 9y ago
LOL the web is dying.
angryasian 9y ago
This mainly sounds like a rant about cross platform development between IOS and Android. I mean couldn't these same arguments be used to justify using RN, or flutter, or etc.. over developing IOS native. I'm sort of missing why he's pointing to Android directly. The main issue is there are two major platforms and like he said people don't want to develop things twice.
- brandmeyer 9y ago
  I think you missed the parts of the article where he complained about API churn, high latency edit-test cycle, and device compatibility.
pvsukale3 9y ago
I am a jr web developer. I attempted learning Android app development using java but gave up because it felt too complicated and hard to me as compared to web development. Last week when Google launched its flutter beta I reinstalled Android studio and worked through basic app development tutorials in their website. Dart feels cool and I feel like I can build something cool without making it too complicated. This is just my opinion but I might be wrong too as I have no experience with developing native apps.
- PKop 9y ago
  I have the same experience. I think this is important, and it seems a lot of people are overlooking the ease of Flutter especially compared to native Android. "It just works". Being backed by Google should also aid it in API compatibility vs other cross platform frameworks who are always playing catchup with the native API's. Static types, hot reloading, a solid library of widgets, native performance, "reactive" just like React.. seems like a win to me. Regarding the points made in this post on front page today [0], I think Dart being an unsexy even "boring" language is a good thing, since it's so much like other languages new devs won't wast time with a steep learning curve. From an evolutionary perspective this can help the platform catch on quickly. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16561901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16561901
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  I honestly cannot grasp this idea that Android dev is more difficult than web dev. Especially when, to get started with Android, you just download Android Studio (1 tool). To get started with web development, you have any number of competing or complimentary or overlapping tools, the combination of which seems to change every week.
  - ld00d 9y ago
    IME, it doesn't get much more complicated than web development. Even as fragmented as Android can be, it's nothing compared to the number of frameworks, build systems, scaling challenges, operating systems, browsers...
  - 9y ago
nareiber 9y ago
My android experience is limited, but these aren't android replacements. They're replacements for creating native android apps. They usually throw on a few, if not ten, megabytes of libraries and glue to get them to work on the respective os/framework they are landing on. Download size still matters outside of metropolitan areas, and performance is always important.
skybrian 9y ago
I'll just point out that Flutter has hot-reload as well. Maybe someone could do a comparison with React?
yazr 9y ago
Completely off topic - but is the Android Gradle builder fully open source, or does it contain specific binary-only components ?! (i.e. can i build the builder itself from source code ?!)
zengid 9y ago
> For business and productivity apps, React Native offers reasonable performance, cross-platform compatibility, incredible tools (the best being from Microsoft. Hello, relevance! Welcome back!) When he says Microsoft has the best tools for React Native, does he mean something like ReactXP [0]? Or Does he just mean Visual Studio Code? [0] https://microsoft.github.io/reactxp/ https://microsoft.github.io/reactxp/
chickenbane 9y ago
I doubt anyone will steal Android from Google. I can see two scenarios where the Android SDK (which includes Kotlin, Java, NDK) + Google Play Services is really threatened: 1) the WeChat scenario. Amazon is probably the best positioned so far and their platform and services are also available on iOS and Web. The potential WeChat could avoid the Google tax by handling payment, but would likely have to offer many of the Google Play Services (notably voice recognition, maps, and location) so Google would likely still be involved (also e.g., GV invests in Lyft and Uber). 2) Future OS includes Android compatibility. Another platform that can also run Android (and therefore has Google Play) apps isn't really a loss for Google, but it is a way for Android to be commoditized in favor of another. Steve is betting on Amazon, but Samsung is probably the most successful with their store (which doesn't seem very successful). If anything Google itself has the advantage here - they mostly have it working on ChromeOS and I'm willing to bet Android compatibility with come to Fuchsia.
eudora 9y ago
> I am talking about full-scale replacements for Google’s entire Android development stack. Microsoft has Xamarin, Adobe has Cordova, Facebook has React Native, I mean it’s crazy town. [...] > It’s like everyone who’s ever tried to do Android programming gave up and declared: “This is so bad that I will do my own startup to make it better.” > And Google, not to be outdone by their competitors, responded by saying, “Oh yeah? Well you can’t compete with us, because we’re going to compete with us!” and they launched Flutter, which is — I am not making this up — a 100% serious Android development stack that competes with native Android, and whose existence the actual Android team simply refuses to acknowledge. This is incorrect. Every one of these I've heard of (all the big ones) and probably the rest don't exist because Android development is so terrible, they exist mostly to facilitate one codebase for both iOS and Android, or to allow the use of a different language. I mean, that's incredibly obvious, so I don't know why he's got this here.
z3t4 9y ago
Google is saving billions by not having to pay for being the default search engine in Chrome and Android.

183 points by aberoham 9y ago

I think Steve's underestimating the power of Google's control over OEMs here. Every OEM wants to get rid of Google's hold over them, but how do they do it without putting their entire corporation at risk? Google has already shown they'll ban your entire company from Google Apps access if you try to produce a single Android device without Google Apps. So any company who wants to exclude Google puts their entire mobile product line at risk on this play. It'd be hard to see anything coming of this unless multiple manufacturers can agree to make the jump together, creating a platform large enough that even Google has to support it for their own market share needs (which means, this group must include Samsung, who's hedged their bets on this sort of thing but seems too scared to make the jump). And even then, this only remains an option as long as the Pixel remains niche. If the Pixel gains an iPhone-like market share amongst the broader range of Android devices, Google can mostly tell other manufacturers to screw off. His notions on cross-platform frameworks making a non-Android platform viable are spot on though. Not only through things like React Native, but PWAs, which Google is pretty bullish on itself, despite the fact that it may make Windows Mobile a viable idea again.

jbob2000 9y ago
To your point - software is king. Any two-bit electronics company can ship a phone, but it's a useless paper weight if it doesn't run the right software. iPhone is generally behind the curve when it comes to hardware specs, but nobody cares about that because iOS is such a strong platform.
- lev99 9y ago
  iOS also seems to perform better with similar specs than Android.
  - pkage 9y ago
    Perks of not running everything in the JVM. Even though it's really fast at this point, it's still going to have more overhead than running apps natively.
    - lev99 9y ago
      Compiled code is faster than bytecode is faster than interpreters. It's not always true, but it's a good rule of thumb.
      - candiodari 9y ago
        It's long established that Java's problem is not the JVM or bytecode but it's memory model. Java's bytecode execution speed in the JVM is good enough that it's on part with C, easily beating any language with even a slightly inefficient compiler, like Go or Haskell.
        ptx 9y ago
        Are you referring to the lack of value types? Or is there some more fundamental problem?
        candiodari 9y ago
        That's a decent part of it, but also the fact that in Java: class A { B b; } "b" will be a pointer, as opposed to "b" being contained within instances of class A.
    - enitihas 9y ago
      Android does not run anything on the JVM AFAIK.
    - vbezhenar 9y ago
      Does it matter when half of the apps are based on Cordova or React Native, running everything in the JavaScript VM and majority of the games are based on Unity running exactly the same C++ and C# code everywhere. It's not like some calendar app will have major performance gains with native code.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  And the "right" software is often controlled by one company. If you read a lot of reviews of Windows Phones, most reviewers seemed to more or less come to the same conclusion: That Windows was a faster, smoother OS, but that they had trouble going about their daily lives with it because it didn't have Gmail and the other five or six Google Apps they relied on. As long as the market share of any newcomer is low enough, Google can leave them out in the cold for app support (or intentionally interfere by blocking YouTube access, similar to what they did with Windows Mobile, and now Amazon's Echo and Fire platforms), and they'll die off for that reason alone. Whether it's an Android fork or a new OS like Tizen or some new Windows flavor, it won't beat Google unless it has the market share to force Google to support it with apps. And it's hard to get that market share without Google's support.
  - RestlessMind 9y ago
    > (or intentionally interfere by blocking YouTube access, similar to what they did with Windows Mobile, and now Amazon's Echo and Fire platforms), Nice spin there! Youtube was blocked on Windows Mobile because Microsoft blatantly blocked all the ads in violation of policy. If Microsoft was in the right here, we would have seen a lot more aggressive posturing from them instead of silent retreat. And for Amazon, it was a reaction to Amazon's decision not to sell Chromecast (and Nest devices). Amazon's excuse is that Google changed Chromecast APIs, which smells weak when you see other supported apps on Chromecast from Netflix, HBO, ESPN etc.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      You are definitely applying your own spin, to be sure. ;) Microsoft tried repeatedly to work with the YouTube team to comply with Google's ToS, but it was a moving target, Google kept changing their requirements until it was largely impossible to comply. The Amazon/Google spat goes back a lot further than that, which I've talked about a bit in other comments here.
    - saurik 9y ago
      If you look at the totality of the evidence, even in that one story (where Microsoft then built the app to Google's specifications, with ads, and then Google waited until they released it before blocking it again), the story looks so bad against Google that even some of the reasonable press was starting to notice and report the issue as Google toying with Microsoft. Here is a link to an overly-well-sourced comment I wrote on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14835776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14835776
- tboyd47 9y ago
  This is Nintendo's same strategy, I believe.
- hantusk 9y ago
  That iPhone is behind the curve on hardware specs is not really true. Their CPU+GPU is faster than anything else on the market. And in terms of other hardware (RAM, camera, sensors) I would still say it's arguable
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Actually the iPhone is only "behind the curve" in adopting new form factors. Regarding CPU and GPU power, camera quality, and new sensors and stuff, the iPhone has always been the machine to beat.
- iainmerrick 9y ago
  iPhone is generally behind the curve when it comes to hardware specs Really? In all the benchmarks I've seen, the latest iPhones handily beat the latest Android phones. (And old iPhones remain usable longer than old Android phones.) Assuming the software doesn't get in the way, benchmarks are all about hardware, not software.
  - mattnewton 9y ago
    The numbers on the box may be lower (number of cores, ram size), but I agree, benchmarks usually show iPhone very competitive or in the lead.
  - wand3r 9y ago
    I couldnt immeadiately find a graph or data but potentially parent was talking about price v performance. The computer offerings historically have been behind the curve but I thought the iPhone performance was strong compared to the field. I would be happy to change my opinion with new information but I agree with you.
  - kerberos84 9y ago
    Given that those benchmarks running on operating systems, the software(OS) matters. >And old iPhones remain usable longer than old Android phones. It depends which Android phone you are comparing with. If you compare with a flagship, it should be head-to-head. But i think that is because of stability/efficiency of iOS over android.
    - iainmerrick 9y ago
      Given that those benchmarks running on operating systems, the software(OS) matters. No, if the OS significantly slows down a benchmark, it's a bad OS. Both Android and iOS are fine in this respect. (It's a bit fuzzier for graphics tests, I admit, where driver quality comes into play.)
    - jjrh 9y ago
      > But i think that is because of stability/efficiency of iOS over android. From what I understand iOS is pretty picky about background processes. Limit what can run in the background (and for how long) with android and you will probably get similar results.
- zellyn 9y ago
  If by "generally behind the curve when it comes to hardware specs" you mean a generation and a half _ahead_, then yes.
bluGill 9y ago
Of course if google actually tries that there is an anti-trust lawsuit awaiting them, which will probably force google to spin off android. (this may require a change in US presidents but that happens all the time)
ttflee 9y ago
> any company who wants to exclude Google puts their entire mobile product line at risk on this play With the exception of China Inc. No place for Google so far.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  True, but that's solely because Google chose not to do business there. They left that opportunity open to other companies, which is why it's the only place competition really exists. That being said, while a Chinese manufacturer could try to branch out into the international market, that hasn't been working out for them so far. Huawei and Xiaomi have both pushed in that direction, but beyond limited success to begin with, now government entities are discouraging Chinese brands due to perceived cybersecurity risks. Whether those risks are overblown or not, it has severely hampered these companies' ability to branch out to the international consumer.
  - Oletros 9y ago
    And even they put Google services in their global ROM's. At least Xiaomi does
lern_too_spel 9y ago
You overestimate how hard it is. Amazon did it, and the entire country of China did it out of necessity. As Amazon's ecosystem gains steam, there will be enough third party replacements for Google's apps that it will be easier for others to switch too.
- product50 9y ago
  When are you seeing Amazon's Android ecosystem is gaining system? All they are doing is building their own apps on top of their implementation of Android. The rest of the apps are just being ported over from normal Android.
  - sounds 9y ago
    Well, it's gaining "steam," not "system," but I see it here: https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/blog/2018/with-homepod-apples-audio-ambitions-come-in-crystal-clear/ https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/blog/2018/with-homepod... day one pre-orders of HomePod were higher than all other smart speaker first day pre-orders, except Amazon’s Echo Dot
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    Amazon's phone might have flopped, but they've eaten the Android tablet market. Google tried to make a "pure" android tablet with the Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Pixel C. The 7 was the only one of those with any success, and it's long gone. Tablets are either iPads, Surfaces, or Kindles now. I don't know what Android tablet would be in next place after the Kindle. If you count big phones with styluses, probably the Galaxy Note. I know the Samsung Galaxy Tab line exists but I've literally never seen one.
    - sbov 9y ago
      I think at least part of the death of the Nexus 7 is because Google seemed to have no interest in refreshing it. I was looking to upgrade mine a while back and the only thing available was the same old tablet. Google has a weird relationship with consumer devices. They release stuff, then seemingly completely abandon it for years. I don't know what exactly their goal is with some of these devices, but if e.g. Microsoft did the same thing with the XBox, they would never be where they are now.
patmcguire 9y ago
Best candidate is some Chinese OEM or tech titan like WeChat that has already done all the insane work it would take to replace the things Google holds hostage. Wouldn't necessarily be more open if it's WeChat, though.

lev99 9y ago

Microsoft invests heavily in Xamarin, but I haven't seen an amazing cross platform app written in it yet, even though it's four years older than React Native. React Native is really good, but I wounder how many developers will be able to move from OOP or Web development to Declarative Programming. I think we'll continue to see a lot of Kotlin and Swift developers for the next decade, as both languages are still attracting many new developers. Android and iOS have been playing nicely with the compatibility layer, but could potential break it if they begin to lose control of the market place. Developing in React Native, while having lower costs, is still more risky than having two native development teams.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
Microsoft feels like it always is moving towards a grand unifying vision, but it is always taking longer than you'd expect. Xamarin is still one of many heads of the great .NET hydra. Microsoft's been making big strides to tame them all under .NET Standard, but there's still plenty of work to go.
- lev99 9y ago
  imo Microsoft has a problem of trying to force technology when it just isn't elegant engineering. Unifying .NET is both an engineer's fool's errand and one of the most obvious things things they can do to improve their business. I was writing some dotnet core 2.0 code the other day and was shocked to find it was missing an officially supported odbc as well as many of the System.Data classes that use to be a big workhorse for developers. .NET has serious problems. Microsoft invested in other technologies that were obviously doomed from an outsider's perspective for far longer than they should. Windows phone and Bing being the two biggest and most obvious stubborn failures.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Bing is hardly a failure, nearly every search engine that isn't Google has switched to it as a data source, and it's market share is growing. Bing's at a third of US search (according to Microsoft, at least): https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/bing-is-bigger-than-you-think-microsoft-boasts-at-33-of-us-searches/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/bing-is-bigger-than-... A lot of companies now compete with Google in one or several markets, and being forced to include Google Search would be fairly painful for a lot of them, so Bing tends to be an immediate contender for anyone who isn't Google trying to integrate search capabilities. Obviously, a fair segment of their market share is just "Bing is default on Edge/IE, and Edge/IE is default on Windows" as well.

digi_owl 9y ago

None most likely. The closest we came was when Amazon unveiled their Fire variant. And the Google response to that was to move development of anything user facing out of AOSP. Compiling AOSP today will result in something that look and behave not much different from late 2.x Android.

kshingne 9y ago
-->Compiling AOSP today will result in something that look and behave not much different from late 2.x Android. Any examples?.As a developer, the one's I think of are location apis (still available in the AOSP, but requires much more code to get right than the google play services version). And the look and feel does not depend on the play services sdk.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Before Android 2.3.7, AOSP included Google Search, Google Books, Google Talk, the Android Music app, the Android Launcher, Settings, Contacts, Calendar. In Android 8.0, AOSP does not include any of these anymore. In Android 8.0, you need to use Google Play services to get Location, Stepcounter, any device sensor, recent TLS on pre-8.0 devices, any of the above apps, background job scheduling (the new JobScheduler only works on 8.0 or Google Play services), and so on. I've written apps that don't rely on Play Services, I had to reverse engineer and clone half of Play Services to even get a semi-working version. Nowadays, the source code of a new Android version is released months after the binaries are released, and over half a year before the first binary beta releases are released (Android P's first beta binaries are out today, the source code is expected in december). You can already build apps for Android P, making use of the new features - if Google gives you the required code, which they only provide to themselves and a selected few developers. Google makes it as hard as possible to compete fairly, and this has already caught the attention of the EU. And then, of course, there's the fact that the Chromecast SDK requires Play Services (so you can't use Chromecast on Kindle devices), and that receiving Chromecasts is even entirely impossible at the current time for non-Google devices (these are the reasons why Amazon doesn't support Chromecast, but is instead together with Netflix trying to establish a cross-platform API that can use Amazon's sticks, Miracast devices, Chromecast, and many other devices). Google has done everything they could to be as anticompetitive as possible, and of course this will lead to legal action. Potentially half of the Android ecosystem at this point may be based on criminally anticompetitive actions.

RestlessMind 9y ago

I keep reading about Fuchsia. Maybe, that is Google's answer to the messy Android stack? I mean, why invest in cleaning up your stack or having a better cross-platform dev environment, when you can just have a clean new OS?

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
Even I have high hopes for Fuchsia. It seems like it's doing a lot of things right from the ground level, particularly in terms of security. But from a business standpoint, it's a huge risk. If Google wants to get OEMs to switch from an established, widely popular platform to a new one, they're going to need one heck of a big carrot. It's likely Google would retain more control with Fuchsia, since giving OEMs control of experience, security, and updates is largely responsible for many of Android's woes, and OEMs will be resistant to that. Google may have a much easier time retaining it's control under Android than trying to push a platform switch, which could actually, lead to OEMs switching to a different company's platform instead.
- ethbro 9y ago
  To me, re-architecting the Google / OEM split benefits both (disclosure: I haven't followed exactly what they're aiming for with Fuchsia). If it becomes possible to update to new Android features and security patches without breaking OEM overware, then OEMs no longer have to dedicate teams to rewriting their crap codebases. Which means they can put all those developers on features instead. Which is what they've always been interested in and (arguably) better at in the first place.
kibwen 9y ago
I'm also intrigued by Fuchsia, but it doesn't look like it's intended as a smartphone OS. Even if it was, without access to the Android app store it'll be no more successful than Windows Phone or any of the other upstarts (and something like a hypothetical Android emulation layer sounds like murder for battery life).
- simmons 9y ago

tootie 9y ago

I think a lot of this is objectively wrong. Any of the Cordova-based platforms (including Ionic, Framework 7 and some others) were built to support every platform including niche players and it still never got much attention from developers. Xamarin as well was able to target Windows Phone and it didn't help. There are already big investments from Android competitors like Samsung in their mobile platforms and they absolutely suck. Even then, a solid cross-platform dev platform like React Native is actually a boon for Android which is second fiddle to Apple when it comes to premium apps. Right now, anyone looking to reach profitability will go iOS first, then web, then Android. Making the cost of bridging the gap to Android smaller will only increase adoption.

pjmlp 9y ago
They are pretty big in enterprise apps, usually targeted to employees. Despite my opinions regarding native UIs, the fact is that we are yet to get pure native apps contracts, they are either Cordova/Xamarin/Qt or plain web based. The majority of enterprise shops do not care about native UI/UX.
- tootie 9y ago
  I'm working on an enterprise app for Android using Xamarin and we are taking the UX semi-seriously. App looks and performs fine. I find the concept of "native look and feel" to be extremely nebulous and not particularly valuable. Apps should look good and be responsive and I don't notice or care when they look native.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    I find the "native look and feel" concept quite valuable, but my experience in enterprise, it that most departments either want a "department/corporate look and feel" or "whatever works look and feel". Thanks for your Xamarin feedback.
NotSteveYegge 9y ago
This is exactly why I said I think cross-platform is good for Android, even though they don't seem to think it is.

braderhart 9y ago

Vulkan and Wayland are going to steal Android away soon, because you will no longer need it.

loxs 9y ago
(laughing emoji)
gregknicholson 9y ago
Seriously though, I'm glad I'm able to opt out of all this channelsy advertising-at-me business. I don't want to be a consumer in this market. I just want communication tools. I'm looking forward to receiving my Librem 5, and I'm pleased Lineage continues producing phone software intended for users, not advertisers.

roel_v 9y ago

Isn't the complaint about Android as a dev platform related to the frequent vs infrequent developer article that's now also on the first page? Sure programming Android is yucky (I struggled with the flavor/build/whatever hierarchy he mentions just this morning, and it's a mess, and even the examples in the official docs are incomprehensible), but so is programming on every mature platform. I write MFC code pretty much every day, and I dig down into win32 at least weekly. Ya it ain't pretty, but I paid the learning price 15 years ago, and now I know every nook and cranny and I can just get things done without googling every little thing, and chasing down if that answer on a forum from 2013 still applies (or is no longer a 'best practice' o how I loathe that term, but I digress...) And sure, the 'getting started' examples of every new framework or platform that promises to fix the warts of the previous one look compelling - but then you start building actual applications, and people find out they need to add this and that and by the time it matures we're 5 years on; and it has accumulated just as much (different, but just as much) cruft as the ones before it.

pjmlp 9y ago
I lost track with MFC during the early 2000, but from the documentation, it hasn't been rebooted half as much as Android has. And if the Java layer is already a mess, with the documentation scattered all over the web instead of Android docs, those of us that adventure in NDK could use a quote from Dante.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ozten 9y ago

This conflates Android the operating system with Android's SDK. Let's say ReactNative wins and developers create apks that are mostly ReactNative... Google still wins. They don't care what an App is written in and customers can't tell either. Android the OS is pretty safe, as cyanogen.com valiant run at Google from this angle proves out.

coldtea 9y ago
>This conflates Android the operating system with Android's SDK. Let's say ReactNative wins and developers create apks that are mostly ReactNative... Google still wins. They don't care what an App is written in and customers can't tell either. Which means other vendors can far more easily keep all their apps and move to a non-Google controlled mobile OS of their own.
- HillaryBriss 9y ago
  I hear what you're saying, but how much more easy does this make it to move to a non-Google OS? The thing is that with Google Play Services libraries and the Google Play Store, Google has a really strong lock on a huge collection of apps out there. Using something like ReactNative on top of that stuff kind of seems like a baby step away from Google, but there's still so much Google control to eliminate.
NotSteveYegge 9y ago
It's not as simple as you might think. If Android OS becomes the plumbing, and Facebook controls the developer experience, then it levels the playing field for a competing hardware/software platform (e.g. Windows). It makes it harder for Google to "control" the platform. It's analogous to how the browser came along and turned the desktop OS into plumbing for a lot of people. My wife uses a Mac but she really has no idea that it's a Mac. She only uses the browser, so she could easily switch to Windows. Apple has really no hooks into her at this point, and that's an uncomfortable position for Apple (or any desktop manufacturer) to be in. Google _needs_ to maintain control of the developer experience. In my opinion they should add a TypeScript option to Flutter, embed the v8 javascript engine into Android, and support Flutter with JavaScript as a first-class citizen on the Android stack. They should start this work yesterday.

loxs 9y ago

Off-topic: can someone explain what is it that is so great about Medium, so that Steve finds it necessary to praise them? To me (as a reader) it's just a blog engine with horrible user experience. Of course, with time I have come to accept it as it is, so I don't get angry every time, but I still find it horrible.

rabidonrails 9y ago
From a reader perspective (can't speak to distribution as the writer etc...), a Medium hosted post usually means that I'm not going to be bombarded with banners, ads, mailing lists etc. I might immediately click out of it, but the barrier for me to click is lower initially.
- NotSteveYegge 9y ago
  Still better than Blogspot. Trust me on this one.
x0x0 9y ago
Publishing to the internet, particularly nicely formatted and with a nice editor, is still a pita. A big pita. Worse if you're Steve Yegge and anything you write can get a hundred thousand visitors. I ran a wordpress blog for a while. What a godawful piece of shit that is. Security critical updates all the time, and HAHAHAHA, they regularly break themes. I have no idea why, but probably because wordpress refuses to create a nice them api so they can try and gpl every theme. Plus it's slow. Plus it's difficult to secure. I had originally used a hosted wp instance until that got repeatedly hacked. Then I ran it myself. Yuck. Then I used octopress for a while. I had to configure nginx and ssl and then deal with things like figuring out why pygments broke. Something went wrong with python which obviously I'm using inside by ruby blog engine. Mathjax deprecated their cdn and I'm still too lazy to go fix it. Medium, imo, creates a nice solution where (1) writing is pleasant, (2) publishing is easy and comes out nicely formatted, and (3) when you're busy, you spend the majority of your time writing instead of doing ancillary things.
- 9y ago

TuringNYC 9y ago

I appreciate having multiple players in the marketplace, it creates healthy competition and keeps progress brisk. My bigger fear isn't someone else stealing Android from Google, but Google stealing Android from Google (e.g., via insufficient investment, insufficient maintenance, confusing strategy, etc.) There are many examples, but some that come to mind are Google letting Google Voice near-die via insufficient maintenance/investment. Or Google literally giving away the opportunity they had in capturing chat (via Google Chat) due to a confusing strategy (Google Chat/Hangouts/Duo/Allo/app-of-the-day)

gman83 9y ago
They're literally going to do this with Fuchsia I predict. ChromeOS is there too already the tablet space is confusing.

bane 9y ago

At some point, Google is going to screw up. This will create business opportunity for anybody who's put a few years and a few hundred million into a strategic replacement. Android is already creaking at the seams in certain places, it won't be a huge surprise if some use-case comes along that invalidates enough of the platform that Google will have to replace it. Don't forget, among the companies that are sinking money into replacing Android is also Google. They're preparing for a fight. Times when OS's were fundamentally replaced because of industry paradigm shifts: - Unix -> Linux - MS-DOS -> Windows - Windows 3.x -> Windows NT - ProDOS -> GUI ProDOSs - Android with a Blackberry clickwheel interface -> Android with a touchscreen - Windows CE -> every other mobile platform - Mac OS -> OS X - OS/2 -> Windows NT - CP/M -> MS-DOS and so on.

Froyoh 9y ago
As for the Mac it seems we've come a full circle: Mac OS -> OS X -> macOS
- dfee 9y ago
  For now, your point stands only from a naming convention perspective. However, if iOS apps do come to the next version of MacOS, we might be on the verge of delineating Mac OS X and MacOS into truly-separate generations.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Actually it is more than that. On the Mac culture, UNIX is only an implementation detail, most users don't care one second it is there. Not even Mac developers, those that actually target Mac users, not using it as a workaround to avoid dealing with Linux/BSD issues on laptops.
adventured 9y ago
> At some point, Google is going to screw up. Microsoft screwed up on numerous occasions with Windows. Once the monopoly was in place, that simply didn't matter so much. Consumer behavior reinforces the monopoly even in the case of screwing up: people very aggressively stick with what they know. The same will be true of Google-Android. Getting consumers to switch is extremely difficult. Competing with Android is extremely expensive. Delivering your Android killer at exactly the right time, with a vast improvement over Android, with the right marketing hit, with the right partners, with the right hardware - good luck, it's not going to happen.

royjacobs 9y ago

Isn't the whole point of these competing stacks not to provide an alternative to Android but to provide an alternative to all phone OSes? The idea being that you can write your application 'once' and it will be available on Android and iOS (and, as a comedy option, Windows Phone I guess)? If you look at these toolkits in that light then their existence is justified without it being a nail in Android's coffin, so to speak. Not that the underlying tooling can't be better, but devs are moving towards cross-platform toolkits precisely because they are cross-platform, not because Android is terrible.

YaxelPerez 9y ago

Isn't Google developing Fuschia OS to replace Android and Chrome OS?

HillaryBriss 9y ago

Another great, highly opinionated, but still great, Yegge post. My favorite quotations: 1. "Android’s dev stack is the world’s biggest poo sandwich" 2. "And Android? Yep. It’s the biggest poo sandwich of them all." 3. "...there are two Android APIs for getting mouse-click events on a scrolling list, but one of those APIs doesn’t work on LG. I mean come on." 4. "I love Kotlin; it’s the future of Java. But let’s face it: It’s not where the mobile market is headed. " 5. ... the Android org at Google is not sure whether cross-platform is good for them or bad for them, but that they are leaning towards “bad” 6. "most of the big shops are aggressively dumping [the android gradle build system] in favor of Buck — Facebook’s Android build system. Google is chasing a dying strategy here." 7. "guess who else is making a big play with a competing [android app] store? You guessed it: Jeff Bezos" 8. "if you’re locked in a fierce competitive race ... and need to launch faster, you should probably go with something other than Android Native ... Among the cross-platform options, React Native is looking like a winner" 9. "there are a lot of big sharks circling the Android boat. Google needs to be careful."

yla92 9y ago

> The irony being that most of the big shops are aggressively dumping it in favor of Buck — Facebook’s Android build system. Google is chasing a dying strategy here. Igave it a try to a "small" project and there weren't any noticeable advantage over Gradle (and given that Instant Run is working quite well, it was really buggy when it comes out). I know for a fact that aside from Facebook, Uber uses it and comes out with a nice Gradle plugin for Buck called OkBuck[0]. I wonder what other big shops use as well. And I would like to know if anyone here has used it and saw any dramatic advantage over Gradle and worth investing time integrating Buck into current projects. [0]: https://github.com/uber/okbuck https://github.com/uber/okbuck

jmull 9y ago
I think of Instant Run as the "crash" button.
merb 9y ago
Well Google has their alternative to "Buck" aswell, called Bazel: https://docs.bazel.build/versions/master/tutorial/android-app.html https://docs.bazel.build/versions/master/tutorial/android-ap...
- izacus 9y ago
  Internally Google doesn't use Gradle at all (never did) so I have no idea what the author tried to tell with his paragraph. The fact that iOS is successful without a comparable build system (everything is bound to Xcode projects and tooling based on that undocumented changing format), makes me think he's overestimating importance of the build system.
  - NotSteveYegge 9y ago
    Android uses Gradle as its default build system. It gets extremely slow on large applications like Uber, Facebook, Nest, Snapchat, etc. The enterprise customers all complain to the Android tools team about it, and they throw a ton of work into trying to speed it up. And it gets more and more complicated. Meanwhile, Uber (their marquee Gradle customer) just switched to Buck -- I don't think Google even knows this yet. The build system in Android is a huge pain point for the dev stack. It's a big part of why things like React Native are gaining traction. Your comparison to iOS is basically invalid/irrelevant, because iOS doesn't have the same legacy packaging issues (APK) as Android has. Android's build is actually quite complicated, more so due to the device proliferation, and it's getting worse over time. Hope that helps. I'd be happy to answer more detailed questions about why it's so bad, since I've worked on it extensively in the past.

byron_fast 9y ago

LOL the web is dying.

angryasian 9y ago

This mainly sounds like a rant about cross platform development between IOS and Android. I mean couldn't these same arguments be used to justify using RN, or flutter, or etc.. over developing IOS native. I'm sort of missing why he's pointing to Android directly. The main issue is there are two major platforms and like he said people don't want to develop things twice.

brandmeyer 9y ago
I think you missed the parts of the article where he complained about API churn, high latency edit-test cycle, and device compatibility.

pvsukale3 9y ago

I am a jr web developer. I attempted learning Android app development using java but gave up because it felt too complicated and hard to me as compared to web development. Last week when Google launched its flutter beta I reinstalled Android studio and worked through basic app development tutorials in their website. Dart feels cool and I feel like I can build something cool without making it too complicated. This is just my opinion but I might be wrong too as I have no experience with developing native apps.

PKop 9y ago
I have the same experience. I think this is important, and it seems a lot of people are overlooking the ease of Flutter especially compared to native Android. "It just works". Being backed by Google should also aid it in API compatibility vs other cross platform frameworks who are always playing catchup with the native API's. Static types, hot reloading, a solid library of widgets, native performance, "reactive" just like React.. seems like a win to me. Regarding the points made in this post on front page today [0], I think Dart being an unsexy even "boring" language is a good thing, since it's so much like other languages new devs won't wast time with a steep learning curve. From an evolutionary perspective this can help the platform catch on quickly. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16561901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16561901
s73v3r_ 9y ago
I honestly cannot grasp this idea that Android dev is more difficult than web dev. Especially when, to get started with Android, you just download Android Studio (1 tool). To get started with web development, you have any number of competing or complimentary or overlapping tools, the combination of which seems to change every week.
- ld00d 9y ago
  IME, it doesn't get much more complicated than web development. Even as fragmented as Android can be, it's nothing compared to the number of frameworks, build systems, scaling challenges, operating systems, browsers...
- 9y ago

nareiber 9y ago

My android experience is limited, but these aren't android replacements. They're replacements for creating native android apps. They usually throw on a few, if not ten, megabytes of libraries and glue to get them to work on the respective os/framework they are landing on. Download size still matters outside of metropolitan areas, and performance is always important.

skybrian 9y ago

I'll just point out that Flutter has hot-reload as well. Maybe someone could do a comparison with React?

yazr 9y ago

Completely off topic - but is the Android Gradle builder fully open source, or does it contain specific binary-only components ?! (i.e. can i build the builder itself from source code ?!)

zengid 9y ago

> For business and productivity apps, React Native offers reasonable performance, cross-platform compatibility, incredible tools (the best being from Microsoft. Hello, relevance! Welcome back!) When he says Microsoft has the best tools for React Native, does he mean something like ReactXP [0]? Or Does he just mean Visual Studio Code? [0] https://microsoft.github.io/reactxp/ https://microsoft.github.io/reactxp/

chickenbane 9y ago

I doubt anyone will steal Android from Google. I can see two scenarios where the Android SDK (which includes Kotlin, Java, NDK) + Google Play Services is really threatened: 1) the WeChat scenario. Amazon is probably the best positioned so far and their platform and services are also available on iOS and Web. The potential WeChat could avoid the Google tax by handling payment, but would likely have to offer many of the Google Play Services (notably voice recognition, maps, and location) so Google would likely still be involved (also e.g., GV invests in Lyft and Uber). 2) Future OS includes Android compatibility. Another platform that can also run Android (and therefore has Google Play) apps isn't really a loss for Google, but it is a way for Android to be commoditized in favor of another. Steve is betting on Amazon, but Samsung is probably the most successful with their store (which doesn't seem very successful). If anything Google itself has the advantage here - they mostly have it working on ChromeOS and I'm willing to bet Android compatibility with come to Fuchsia.

eudora 9y ago

> I am talking about full-scale replacements for Google’s entire Android development stack. Microsoft has Xamarin, Adobe has Cordova, Facebook has React Native, I mean it’s crazy town. [...] > It’s like everyone who’s ever tried to do Android programming gave up and declared: “This is so bad that I will do my own startup to make it better.” > And Google, not to be outdone by their competitors, responded by saying, “Oh yeah? Well you can’t compete with us, because we’re going to compete with us!” and they launched Flutter, which is — I am not making this up — a 100% serious Android development stack that competes with native Android, and whose existence the actual Android team simply refuses to acknowledge. This is incorrect. Every one of these I've heard of (all the big ones) and probably the rest don't exist because Android development is so terrible, they exist mostly to facilitate one codebase for both iOS and Android, or to allow the use of a different language. I mean, that's incredibly obvious, so I don't know why he's got this here.

z3t4 9y ago

Google is saving billions by not having to pay for being the default search engine in Chrome and Android.