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Having worked for so many years at Google, you should be aware that your employer is forbidding Android manufacturers to also produce any non-certified Android-

by blub 8y ago

Having worked for so many years at Google, you should be aware that your employer is forbidding Android manufacturers to also produce any non-certified Android-based devices. No Android logo, no app store, no GApps, still forbidden if that company happens to sell an unrelated Android device. So in fact it is not about "whether Google is allowed to control the experience of Android phones that want to use the Google apps and app store or not". Regarding open source, Android v1 was an underpowered and underfeatured newcomer in a market dominated by Symbian and Blackberry where Windows was at a few percent and iOS was making inroads. There's a very good chance that without it being open source it would have went precisely nowhere. Let's not rewrite history and make it look like Android was a clear winner from the beginning, back then even iPhone was pretty crap, and Android was that times two.

utopcell 8y ago
This argument doesn't make any sense. Android was developed via billions of dollars of investment by Google. Google has no obligation to provide a free OSS variant, other than for the parts that are GPL'ed. If all Google is offering is the complete Android experience (including the App store and all the Google apps,) and not any OSS variant, how are manufacturers limited exactly ? They can either use Android, that is being offered to them for free, or roll their own OS.
- blub 8y ago
  Google has no obligation to provide the OSS version, but they can't really afford to close Android either, it would be a major PR blow and Samsung would basically immediately ship their own fork, perhaps with the Amazon store and a couple extra apps to replace the Google maps, Chrome, etc. Manufacturers are limited contractually. This is detailed in the EU press release linked to this thread. Alas, one still has to actually read it or alternatively have some knowledge about how Android is licensed.
DannyBee 8y ago
(The rest we are going to disagree on. I know the specifics of these agreements and advised on some of them, so i can't talk about them for rea) "There's a very good chance that without it being open source it would have went precisely nowhere. " Why? You say a lot of things, but none seem to related to why this is true. As far as i can tell, it is definitively not true. The app developers were happy to go where there was money, and the users certainly didn't care. Again, i'm a huge supporter of open source projects, i donate to the FSF, etc. I would love for it to be the case to say that Android was a success/failure because of open source. It's just i've seen exactly zero data that supports this notion, and a lot that doesn't. The real history rewrite here is the rewrite that Android didn't enable choice or competition. Before Android all of the systems you're talking about had user interfaces that were tightly controlled by the carriers right down to the Verizon internet browser. Your best case scenario would be apple winning. Your worst case scenario is you still have Verizon deciding what your phone user interface should be like.
- blub 8y ago
  Developers and users generally won't care whether it's open source, I agree. Manufacturers like Samsung or Sony would though, especially after their experiences with Symbian. Not because they care about freedom, but because they want to have some form of control over their own destiny. The US market was always an anomaly and under tight carrier control. There the iPhone and Android enabled choice. This is however mostly irrelevant for the EU and especially for this verdict. It's undeniable that there are now fewer choices and competitors available, and that most of the ones that are gone have been killed by Android: Windows Phone, Blackberry, Symbian, Meego, FirefoxOS, etc.
  - njoro 8y ago
    I must say that the whole situation is very disappointing. While western companies have been folding, China has a very active smartphone ecosystem with multiple manufacturers of phones and many different providers of services, including app stores. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?
- IBM 8y ago
  Android got market share because it was free, not because it was good. If Google didn't share ad revenue with carriers and OEMs or tried to extract a license fee ala Windows, Google would not be sitting on 80% global market share today.
  - zmmmmm 8y ago
    > Android got market share because it was free, not because it was good. If free was all that mattered then one of the other smattering of "free" open source mobile OSes would have taken off. You can perhaps say that free is a necessary condition but it clearly isn't sufficient. Something else matters and to a first approximation that can be thought of as "goodness".
    - gkya 8y ago
      The world has changed. Today what determines the success of a mobile platform is availability if applications. If Ubuntu's thing could run WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram apps (especially the first b/c it has to be an app), it would have a completely different fate. If I was Mark Shuttleworth, I'd go to Facebook and offer porting WhatsApp for free. IDK the US, but for most of the world, it's an essential means of communication.
zmmmmm 8y ago
> you should be aware that your employer is forbidding Android manufacturers to also produce any non-certified Android-based devices This is true but is not relevant to the situation at hand and Google has very reasonable arguments for insisting on this. As far as I understand it, there is no requirement for a manufacturer to ship Google search or the Play Store on an Android device they manufacture. They only require that manufacturers not fragment the ecosystem by breaking compatibility. If you are going to build on the back of the ecosystem, don't break that same ecosystem, and that is quite reasonable. I am sure Microsoft would not tolerate OEMs licensing windows then modifying the Windows APIs on the installed system to break compatibility with apps made by Microsoft and 3rd parties. I am quite sure they would refuse to continue to license Windows to OEMs that did that. The issue at hand is around what Google requires once somebody wants to license the Play Store. At that point they are required to also ship Google Search as the default which is the problem.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

by blub 8y ago

utopcell 8y ago

This argument doesn't make any sense. Android was developed via billions of dollars of investment by Google. Google has no obligation to provide a free OSS variant, other than for the parts that are GPL'ed. If all Google is offering is the complete Android experience (including the App store and all the Google apps,) and not any OSS variant, how are manufacturers limited exactly ? They can either use Android, that is being offered to them for free, or roll their own OS.

blub 8y ago
Google has no obligation to provide the OSS version, but they can't really afford to close Android either, it would be a major PR blow and Samsung would basically immediately ship their own fork, perhaps with the Amazon store and a couple extra apps to replace the Google maps, Chrome, etc. Manufacturers are limited contractually. This is detailed in the EU press release linked to this thread. Alas, one still has to actually read it or alternatively have some knowledge about how Android is licensed.

DannyBee 8y ago

(The rest we are going to disagree on. I know the specifics of these agreements and advised on some of them, so i can't talk about them for rea) "There's a very good chance that without it being open source it would have went precisely nowhere. " Why? You say a lot of things, but none seem to related to why this is true. As far as i can tell, it is definitively not true. The app developers were happy to go where there was money, and the users certainly didn't care. Again, i'm a huge supporter of open source projects, i donate to the FSF, etc. I would love for it to be the case to say that Android was a success/failure because of open source. It's just i've seen exactly zero data that supports this notion, and a lot that doesn't. The real history rewrite here is the rewrite that Android didn't enable choice or competition. Before Android all of the systems you're talking about had user interfaces that were tightly controlled by the carriers right down to the Verizon internet browser. Your best case scenario would be apple winning. Your worst case scenario is you still have Verizon deciding what your phone user interface should be like.

blub 8y ago
Developers and users generally won't care whether it's open source, I agree. Manufacturers like Samsung or Sony would though, especially after their experiences with Symbian. Not because they care about freedom, but because they want to have some form of control over their own destiny. The US market was always an anomaly and under tight carrier control. There the iPhone and Android enabled choice. This is however mostly irrelevant for the EU and especially for this verdict. It's undeniable that there are now fewer choices and competitors available, and that most of the ones that are gone have been killed by Android: Windows Phone, Blackberry, Symbian, Meego, FirefoxOS, etc.
- njoro 8y ago
  I must say that the whole situation is very disappointing. While western companies have been folding, China has a very active smartphone ecosystem with multiple manufacturers of phones and many different providers of services, including app stores. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?
IBM 8y ago
Android got market share because it was free, not because it was good. If Google didn't share ad revenue with carriers and OEMs or tried to extract a license fee ala Windows, Google would not be sitting on 80% global market share today.
- zmmmmm 8y ago
  > Android got market share because it was free, not because it was good. If free was all that mattered then one of the other smattering of "free" open source mobile OSes would have taken off. You can perhaps say that free is a necessary condition but it clearly isn't sufficient. Something else matters and to a first approximation that can be thought of as "goodness".
  - gkya 8y ago
    The world has changed. Today what determines the success of a mobile platform is availability if applications. If Ubuntu's thing could run WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram apps (especially the first b/c it has to be an app), it would have a completely different fate. If I was Mark Shuttleworth, I'd go to Facebook and offer porting WhatsApp for free. IDK the US, but for most of the world, it's an essential means of communication.

zmmmmm 8y ago

> you should be aware that your employer is forbidding Android manufacturers to also produce any non-certified Android-based devices This is true but is not relevant to the situation at hand and Google has very reasonable arguments for insisting on this. As far as I understand it, there is no requirement for a manufacturer to ship Google search or the Play Store on an Android device they manufacture. They only require that manufacturers not fragment the ecosystem by breaking compatibility. If you are going to build on the back of the ecosystem, don't break that same ecosystem, and that is quite reasonable. I am sure Microsoft would not tolerate OEMs licensing windows then modifying the Windows APIs on the installed system to break compatibility with apps made by Microsoft and 3rd parties. I am quite sure they would refuse to continue to license Windows to OEMs that did that. The issue at hand is around what Google requires once somebody wants to license the Play Store. At that point they are required to also ship Google Search as the default which is the problem.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]