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This conflates Android the operating system with Android's SDK. Let's say ReactNative wins and developers create apks that are mostly ReactNative... Google stil

by 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.

by ozten 9y ago

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.