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I think the "android vision" is the mythical belief that certain consumers have that Google wanted to release an open phone platform for the benefit of the user

I think the "android vision" is the mythical belief that certain consumers have that Google wanted to release an open phone platform for the benefit of the users. I disagree about Google having much choice about how they set up the licensing terms however. In order for Android to become the defacto platform for handset manufacturers, they needed to license it in a way which was more attractive to the companies building and deploying the phones. I don't think that carriers mucking with Android is some fatal flaw that will doom the platform, but I also absolutely don't believe that when Google was launching Android, that they envisioned carriers in China replacing all their services with Baidu. If they did anticipate that, and still opted to release Android the way they did, then they are idiots; which I don't really believe.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago
I wouldn't be that surprised if that (Chinese Android phones minus Google) was actually part of the plan. But then I'm not even sure why it's being presented as a problem by media outlets. Similar to piracy of music or games, it's only really a loss if that pirate was originally going to be buying in the first place. Having Android forks on phones is only a loss to Google if they were going to have pure Android on them in the first place (rather than WM, Symbian, Bada, Meego or whatever other competitor OS). Just like Bill Gates said he'd rather have China running pirated Windows than a competitor and he'd figure out how to monitize it later, I'm sure Google are overjoyed that a fork of their mobile OS making it easier for Billions of people to get on the net and start clicking on ads.