17 ms·

Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

414 points by coloneltcb 13y ago

mdellabitta 13y ago
While I can see the point of this article, it's being cast in a much more dramatic light than necessary. Phrases like "While Google is out to devalue the open source codebase as much as possible" seem hyperbolic to me.
- andrewflnr 13y ago
  I agree. While it does make some good, disturbing points, you can tell they had to stretch to make some of the other points.
rattray 13y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Linus Torvalds famous for his iron grip of Linux? In a very different way, to be sure, but it's my understanding that just because you make something open source doesn't mean you have to (or even should) relinquish control. I think it's also pretty standard to open-source the core and keep the baubles proprietary. GitHub, for example, made their git interaction library open-source but their git hosting service itself is closed, as far as I know.
- takluyver 13y ago
  Every open source project has someone (or some group) in control, and contributions can't land without their say so. But anyone who feels that the current leadership is doing it wrong can fork the code and try to persuade people to use their version. This is very important to the way open source software works. Google have a level of control beyond that: they undermine anyone trying to fork Android by not letting them use Google's apps and services (even as they allow such use on competing systems like iOS).
  - ahomescu1 13y ago
    I have a feeling that if an Android fork actually started to gain serious market share, Google would very quickly allow them to use GMail, Youtube and the other apps.
    - artsrc 13y ago
      Amazon have a Kindle product that is an Android fork with serious market share. I don't know if Google has anything in the Kindle market place with GMail etc.
      - ahomescu1 13y ago
        The Kindle Fire doesn't have the Google Apps, and might never have them, but the Barnes&Noble Nook HD does (I have one), starting a few months ago. It originally didn't (I suspect for the same reason as the Kindle Fire), but Google later allowed B&N to run the apps (B&N even replaced their custom web browser with Chrome, a move which not everyone liked).
  - rattray 13y ago
    Sure. That makes perfect sense to me - Google apps and services aren't open source in spirit or practice. If I wanted a pure open-source mobile OS of my own, I wouldn't want any of Google's apps or services tainting it; if I did, Google would evaluate that option on their own, as they should.
MichaelGG 13y ago
The only real thing that seems "evil" is the requirement for OEMs to not manufacture _any_ devices compatible with non-Google forks. The rest of it seems pretty necessary in order to keep carriers and OEMs in line. A lesson Microsoft learned, and why Windows Phone started off by allowing the user to remove any pre-installed crap. If Google didn't do any of this, and was totally altruistic, Samsung and others would already have completely screwed things up. While it's certainly very much to Google's benefit, it also benefits most users because overall, Google has done a far better job than any OEM regarding user experience.
- zmmmmm 13y ago
  > the requirement for OEMs to not manufacture _any_ devices compatible with non-Google forks Is that really where the line is? My understanding is that it is almost the opposite: an OEM cannot manufacture any devices that break compatibility with AOSP, not support compatibility with a 3rd party fork. And the constraint is a condition of membership of AOSP rather than something imposed directly by Google. They can make things as compatible with as many non-Google forks as they want. They can break all compatibility wherever they want if they give up AOSP membership.
- fpgeek 13y ago
  In fact, the boundaries of the compatibility requirement are pretty fuzzy. For instance, the Acer/Aliyun situation is more complicated than presented. The Aliyun app store was distributing pirated apps (including pirated Google apps): http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/15/aliyun-app-store-confirmed-to-be-distributing-pirated-android-apps-many-from-another-pirate-site/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/15/aliyun-app-store-con... It seems obvious that Acer would have wound up in hot water with Google over this somehow, though it is odd that Google decided to focus their complaint on compatibility (rather than on Aliyun's piracy). On the other side of the coin, many Android OEMs have distributed (and still distribute, so far as I know) devices without Google apps for the Chinese market (including Samsung, ASUS, Huawei, and even Motorola [1]). So far as I can remember, these were always essentially the same as non-Chinese devices except that they came with a different ROM that didn't include Google Apps. Nevertheless, that means that there's some scope for making non-Google Android devices, we just don't know how far it goes. Maybe if the HTC/Amazon rumors turn out to be true, we'll find out more. [1] Though I think Motorola's efforts were shut-down post-merger because of Google's China policies.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
cloudwalking 13y ago
> Android has arguably won the smartphone wars, but "Android winning" and "Google winning" are not necessarily the same thing. This is false. Google wins when more people use the Internet. Android is fulfilling its initial goal incredibly well: offer a free and open-source mobile OS to encourage mobile device proliferation. Android is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
- Nerdfest 13y ago
  The article's description of what we're to happen if Apple did not have competition is quite accurate and write frightening. Even with the north American market share that Apple has they abuse it where possible.
  - gibwell 13y ago
    Apple hasn't abused anything.
  - cloudwalking 13y ago
    Yes I agree. Android is not about North America. Android is about India, Africa, and China.
    - Elv13 13y ago
      It is banned from China (AFAIK, they use Alibaba fork). India and Africa are mostly untapped markets. The 80% market share come from America and Europe
      - tomkarlo 13y ago
        That statement is entirely incorrect. http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2012/12/smartphone-market-share-trends-by-country.html#.UmSfthRDsao http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2012/12/smartphone-market-share...
      - zhte415 13y ago
        Android is not banned from (or, in) China. It is hugely popular. See, for example, a popular website's offerings for Android telephones: http://mobile.139shop.com/commend/170__001_1.htm http://mobile.139shop.com/commend/170__001_1.htm Interestingly, in China, and this is personal experience not a market survey, the more one moves away from big brand manufacturers of Android telephones, the more pure / bare-bones / no manufacturer or telecom added applications the Android install is (again, China experience only). I am sitting in mainland China with an Android phone in my pocket. 518 Yuan can easily buy a bright 5 inch screen, 4 days battery life (my average usage) with WiFi on most of the time, only one manufacturer installed app (Baidu input; being in China, this useful), 1.2GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 2 SIM card slots, SD Card slot (free card included, only 2GB, but free is free), 5MP camera (2MP reverse), user serviceable battery.
davyjones 13y ago
> Google does everything in-house. The company gets Maps and all of its cloud services basically for free. This statement is utterly false. In-house does not mean free.
- Brakenshire 13y ago
  All of its Maps data and many of its APIs already existed for Google Maps on the desktop. Within the mobile space, and relative to a mobile-only competitor, Google's access to that data is effectively free.
  - andrewflnr 13y ago
    You mean it has a low marginal cost. However, it required a huge capital investment to create, from which they are now rightfully reaping the benefits.
    - Brakenshire 13y ago
      I'm certainly not saying they are wrong to leverage that asset. I don't think the point is about right or wrong as regards Google's action, but simply the extra barrier this represents for a competitor.
  - dirtyaura 13y ago
    Map data for mobile isn't free even for Google. Google buys licenses to the data from a few map data providers, and as there was effectively a duopoly in global map data, those licenses have very strict terms of use. To use that data for e.g. real-time navigation assistance in mobile requires a different, much more expensive licenses.
    - Brakenshire 13y ago
      Good point, thanks for the correction.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
tonyfelice 13y ago
"In an ocean with great waves, whales fly into the air unnoticed, but in a calm pond, even the tiniest minnow makes a ripple." -confucius When the iPhone debuted, no doubt Google sensed the impact, and Apple's ability to create an effective closed ecosystem had already been proven with iTunes. I believe that Google wanted to undermine the market long enough to understand it. True enough, "android winning" was not the same as "Google winning," but it did mean everyone else "losing." I believe that for Google, Android started as a strategy in search of a goal. It was a smokescreen to prevent Apple from taking a dominant position by default. As the data poured in, they began to understand how to leverage it, and the Nexus line became an expression of such understanding, working to establish more control, and hopefully emerge from the smokescreen they had created.
- EdwardDiego 13y ago
  > whales fly into the air unnoticed Is this the origin of the Twitter fail-whale?
- millstone 13y ago
  > I believe that for Google, Android started as a strategy in search of a goal. It was a smokescreen to prevent Apple from taking a dominant position by default Impossible. Google bought Android years before Apple sold a single phone.
- coopdog 13y ago
  I will only buy / recommend nexus phones. Knowing that the phone will be updated quickly and for a long time is worth a premium, rather than being a cash in strat for Google.
  - innino 13y ago
    my impression of nexus devices is that you are tied to the package of google services. is this so, or can a nexus-user break free from google's domain and enjoy the benefits of a quality low-cost device without being beholden to the google ecosystem?
yeet 13y ago
google had a very good reason to move services outside AOSP, to update them without relying on carriers. they could release billing API v3 w/ 90% compatibility in day 1. this is how they could workaround fragmentation. as an android dev, i love being able to read framework source code for better design, performance and less bugs. that is all really matters imho.
- zobzu 13y ago
  for development yes, thats like providing a SDK. I can develop just fine on Windows phones and even iOS :) So basically, its not really all that opensource anymore, that's what most people mean.
  - yeet 13y ago
    it is not the same with providing an SDK. Well, if android was documented better, we would not need source code this much but most of the time, it requires checking the actual implementation to understand the whole picture. Probably it is the difference between being "just fine" to creating great things.
cremnob 13y ago
Open always wins, until it conflicts with your business interests. "Open" used to be the oft-repeated advantage over iOS in the early days, I wonder if that will slip away from the narrative like "SD card slots", "removable batteries", and "real keyboard" did.
- TylerE 13y ago
  History doesn't really support this. Even Linux had to get some corporate backing (initially Red Hat, Suse, and the like), and later Canonical and others before it really took off. Open source has proven to be a long term survivor, but not a winner.
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    Open source is most definitely winning in infrastructure, high performance computing, servers, etc... Ask IBM or Oracle if Linux is losing...
    - TylerE 13y ago
      You're conflating the reasons though...would Linux be winning in those areas without big corporate $$$?
      - andrewflnr 13y ago
        I was going to say, "well, most people aren't actually using a corporate-sponsored distro", but I guess the real question is whether Linux would have become the impressive piece of technology it is today without corporate backing, if there had never been anyone working on it full-time. Maybe FreeBSD would have taken it's place if Linus didn't have enough time to work on it. Either way, it's really hard for me to imagine a non-open system in this position of dominance.
      - Mikeb85 13y ago
        Does it matter? Corporations adopted Linux because of it's openness, and Linux is winning in those areas because of corporations who adopted it because of.... Open doesn't mean 'hobbyist', it merely refers to the freedoms enabled by the code's license...
lnanek2 13y ago
What's really annoying is when the Google apps start becoming worse to make Google more money. I never open the app store without wanting an app, but it constantly tries to sell me books and movies and stuff like that. They even have separate Google apps for reading and movies, so shoving it in the app store is just a money grab making my usage more difficult to shove some ads in my face. Were these apps open source people could just fork, but we're stuck going along with Google until they mess up so bad it makes sense to switch over entirely to Amazon App store, Samsung Apps Seller, etc. and the equivalent for everything else.
- cremnob 13y ago
  This is an opportunity for Yahoo. The article mentions that OEMs can't leave because they're afraid of losing Google services, Yahoo can be that replacement. They've been making beautiful mobile apps lately and they have some very polished services. They are a pure play service provider who isn't trying to compete with the OEMs; they have no conflict of interest. If you work at Yahoo, this is something you should run up the chain. A relationship with OEMs would solve their problems, and allow you to get a foothold in mobile that you haven't been able to before.
  - tapsboy 13y ago
    Yahoo internals were even discussing ideas of creating their own fork of Android, way back in 2010. Nothing happened.
georgestephanis 13y ago
Well, this is really arguable. The "Iron Grip" is the modules that happen to be dependent on authenticated API calls to the servers that Google owns and maintains. I'd fully support their modules that connect to the cloud servers being open source / GPL / etc, but to expect them to open them up to unauthenticated requests is untenable and leaves them way open to abuse / lack of rate limiting / making the service a bad time for all involved.
- Brakenshire 13y ago
  > Well, this is really arguable. The "Iron Grip" is the modules that happen to be dependent on authenticated API calls to the servers that Google owns and maintains. It also consists of witholding access to those APIs if a company uses a competitor service: > Another point of control is that the Google apps are all licensed as a single bundle. So if you want Gmail and Maps, you also need to take Google Play Services, Google+, and whatever else Google feels like adding to the package. A company called Skyhook found this out the hard way when it tried to develop a competing location service for Android. Switching to Skyhook's service meant Google would not be able to collect location data from users. This was bad for Google, so Skyhook was declared "incompatible." OEMs that wanted the Google Apps were not allowed to use them. Skyhook sued, and the lawsuit is still pending.
Brakenshire 13y ago
> While it might not be an official requirement, being granted a Google apps license will go a whole lot easier if you join the Open Handset Alliance. The OHA is a group of companies committed to Android—Google's Android—and members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devices. That's right, joining the OHA requires a company to sign its life away and promise to not build a device that runs a competing Android fork. ... > This makes life extremely difficult for the only company brazen enough to sell an Android fork in the west: Amazon. Since the Kindle OS counts as an incompatible version of Android, no major OEM is allowed to produce the Kindle Fire for Amazon. So when Amazon goes shopping for a manufacturer for its next tablet, it has to immediately cross Acer, Asus, Dell, Foxconn, Fujitsu, HTC, Huawei, Kyocera, Lenovo, LG, Motorola, NEC, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, and ZTE off the list. Currently, Amazon contracts Kindle manufacturing out to Quanta Computer, a company primarily known for making laptops. Amazon probably doesn't have many other choices. That is fairly incredible, I'm surprised it is not an anti-trust/competition issue.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  It's not anti-trust because they're not required to only build Android devices. HTC and Samsung also build Windows Phone devices...
- icebraining 13y ago
  Are you serious? What other commercial OS can I do a competing fork of? Don't you see that the same restrictions apply to all other consumer OSs (iOS, WP, etc) by simply being closed-source?
  - Brakenshire 13y ago
    That's a fair point, but Android is open source (and indeed was heavily marketed on that basis). They don't get to use any mechanism they like to make the situation comparable to their closed competitors. Their situation is also not comparable to iOS, WP, etc, because of their position of market dominance, just the same as the situation with Windows and Mac OS back in the day.
parennoob 13y ago
When someone like Github does this (make some parts of their code open-source, but others closed-source), journalists don't write critical pieces about them, do they? I mean, Google leaves a bad taste in my mouth since they started shuttering services like it was Christmas at the Google Service Chopping Block, but I don't see them being actively evil here. It's all according to the previously openly aired plan. Google keeps all of the existing code open source. Anyone who wants to build a fork can do so. Now if they want a hardware platform to run on, go find one outside the Open Handset Alliance ecosystem. It's fair game -- if a hardware partner thinks that one of Google's competitors can provide a better Android fork, they are free to leave the Alliance and go partner with that competitor. They will still get an enormous amount of code for free in AOSP. They just won't get all of the services that Google is building specifically for its own version of Android. How is any of this maintaining an "iron grip" in any way? Just contrast this with Apple where it is the sole owner of everything to do with the OS and app marketplace.
- gibwell 13y ago
  Google used 'Android is open' as a dishonest slogan to convince developers that it wasn't just a power play. That is why they are being criticized. It's not about who is more open. It's that Google misled everyone about their intentions.
  - afsina 13y ago
    Prove that Android is not open.
    - devcpp 13y ago
      He meant free (as in freedom), not open. "Proof" of that is in the submission's article. It's not exactly a formal proof but it has convinced most people here. Unfortunately, this highlights some weaknesses in the GPLv2, which is supposed to guarantee freedom.
      - rsynnott 13y ago
cromwellian 13y ago
Most of the examples of Google closed apps that are not part of the AOSP release are in fact apps that are based off of Google data-center services. Would it really help Samsung if the source to the Gmail app was open? Since Google controls the server side, and the client-server protocol, it limits the amount of innovation they can do. The web equivalent would be like claiming that Chrome OS isn't open because the source to Gmail isn't available. Google is stuck behind a rock and a hard place. If they don't try to create incentives for a unified experience, they get bashed for encouraging fragmentation, if they do assert a level of control, they get bashed for not being completely open.
- fpgeek 13y ago
  And, in fact, the same author made the exact same point about Google Play Services being a big tool Google is using to get past OS version fragmentation about a month-and-a-half ago: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/balky-carriers-and-slow-oems-step-aside-google-is-defragging-android/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/balky-carriers-and-sl...
  - dannyr 13y ago
    The author was all-praises on Google for its actions. "Not having to package everything into a major OS update means Google can get features out to more users much faster and more frequently than before. ... This should all lead to a more unified, less fragmented, healthier Android ecosystem."
- dmethvin 13y ago
  > Google is stuck behind a rock and a hard place. If they don't try to create incentives for a unified experience, they get bashed for encouraging fragmentation, if they do assert a level of control, they get bashed for not being completely open. This is exactly the position Microsoft was in during the mid-1990s, even before they went after Netscape. The article is saying that Google is even applying some of the same strong-arm tactics to keep OEMs in line. Fortunately, Google can point to Apple and say they're not a monopoly the way Microsoft was in its market. Plus, Android still looks really open compared to iOS.
pazimzadeh 13y ago
So, every Samsung phone effectively comes with three versions of the main apps - the AOSP version, the Google Play version, and Samsung's bloatware? This seems like a terrible situation for users. Can someone with a Samsung smartphone confirm this? If this is the case, how are the apps organized when you first buy the phone - are they all in one big apps list?
- hrkristian 13y ago
  Samsung devices ship with two versions, remember that while Samsung can't opt out of the Google apps, they're free to remove any AOSP app they'd like. In fact, I've had AOSP apps disappear from my Cyanogen Mod ROM when I installed gapps, although I don't know if that was due to being overwritten or just part of the install script.
Mikeb85 13y ago
I think alot of people misunderstand what open source means. It's nothing more than allowing people to see the source code, and use it (including forking). Open source doesn't require you to cooperate with anyone, it doesn't require you to give away access to APIs, it doesn't require you to do anything beyond whatever is explicitly stated in the license. Google, Canonical, Oracle, IBM, Red Hat, SUSE, etc... aren't required to be good team players or corporate citizens. They're just required to abide by the terms of the licenses on code they use...
- Brakenshire 13y ago
  Well, there is a philosophy (or rather, various different philosophies) that go along with the legal structures, and different projects have different levels of adherence to those ideas. It eventually comes down to perception of value. Part of the original attraction of Android was its openness, if Google is now closing off substantial functionality, to head off competition, then it's not unfair for people to re-evaluate their enthusiasm for the product.
  - oscargrouch 13y ago
    > Part of the original attraction of Android was its openness, if Google is now closing off substantial functionality, to head off competition, then it's not unfair for people to re-evaluate their enthusiasm for the product. Very well put! Its not a legal perception that theres something wrong about what they are doing(and nobody are saying that they cannot do it in the legal aspect).. its a betrayal of some part that make people defend android for what it is, a open source project.. its the ideal behind the project that is being broken If its not like that anymore, the same people that support it for its openess should be aware of it.. and see that things are actually, gradually and silently changing..
    - Apocryphon 13y ago
      Perhaps there should be a phrase to mean "open source in name only." I wonder if all of this is related to Richard Stallman's dismissal of projects that claim to be open source, saying that it isn't enough unless it's "free software."
EGreg 13y ago
If AOSP is open source and Google updates let's say the location services, why can't anyone start a similar project for AOSP and have it funded (like by Apache or Mozilla)? It seems that the main problem is the gatekeepers who manufacture phones.
- hayksaakian 13y ago
  That, or someone to maintain a generic shim/interface so that the proprietary services are interchangeable
- zobzu 13y ago
  Mozilla makes Firefox OS. They don't have the resources to also fix Android and what not, I think. Apache takes a few projects under its wing but they don't provide the developers, and thus many of their projects are stalling.
millstone 13y ago
> Google was terrified that Apple would end up ruling the mobile space. So, to help in the fight against the iPhone at a time when Google had no mobile foothold whatsoever, it was decided that Google would buy Android. And Android would be open source. This is blatantly false. Google bought Android in 2005, two years before the iPhone was announced.
- rarepostinlurkr 13y ago
  Almost exactly a year after they bought Android, Schmidt joined the Apple board of directors. The iPhone certainly was in development some time prior to its announcement.
  - Shooti 13y ago
    Schmidt joined the Apple board August 29th 2006: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/08/29Google-CEO-Dr-Eric-Schmidt-Joins-Apples-Board-of-Directors.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/08/29Google-CEO-Dr-Eric... Public iPhone announcement was January 9th 2007: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-the-Phone-with-iPhone.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-th... Even with a conspiracy angle, a three month head start isn't much.
- hackula1 13y ago
  Android clearly went in a different direction post-iPhone.
  - saiyan 13y ago
    Agreed. All those videos of Android demo or prototype units clearly showed Android was a Blackberry clone (just look at that tiny touchpad for navigating around Android OS) and changed its design direction after iPhone made its appearance.
    - bookwormAT 13y ago
      nonesense. Android is a software platform that companies can build sofware and devices on. Android is not a device, and it's not an "operating system" in the sense that people use this word today. It is a fundament that you can build an operating system with, and a cross platform that allows applications run on different software, as long as this software is based on Android. If you want to show off what Android can do, you put it on all kinds of devices that people are using at the moment. If everyone has a Blackberry, you want to show that you can make a software for Blackberrys based on Android. If everyone is hyped on digital cameras, you show a software and ui for such a camera. Android used to have 3 prototypes in its early stages: a blackberry type, a tablet-type device, and the device that later became the Tmobile G1, the first android phone. The platform never changed course, and it clearly never was a Blackberry clone.
peterashford 13y ago
Claiming that Google is "controlling open source" by working in-house on it's own Android applications is just really bizarre.
alexandros 13y ago
So I guess the sign to look out for is Samsung licensing the Amazon APIs?
- thethimble 13y ago
  That would be interesting: an Amazon-Samsung software-hardware partnership.
sriramyadavalli 13y ago
Nothing wrong with what Google is doing. Google is essentially a consumer (and enterprise) cloud services company that is looking to commoditize (read open source/sell at cost) all other parts of the stack. That includes open-sourcing Chrome/Android, selling Chromecast/Google Fiber at cost.
x0054 13y ago
I once read an article in 2010 that criticized people for saying that Apple and iOS of the 2000s is like the Microsoft and Windows of the 90s. The article pointed out that Apple IS the Apple of the 90s and Google with its Android platform will become the Windows of the 90s. I think it's happening. In a few years Android is going to be as closed sourced as Windows, probably as ubiquitous, and most likely, just as prone to security issues. It's already kind of like windows, no? It runs on hundreds if different devices. It's often bloated by OEM software that people hate. It's prone to security wholes. It's slow and clunky unless you run it on the latest hardware. It bends over backwards for compatibility sake. It's more and more closed sourced... Android is Mobile windows of the 90s. I hope Ubuntu Mobile will be successful.
- vetinari 13y ago
  Sorry, but some of the things you wrote are about perception, not reality. What does "prone to security issues" mean? And compared to what? When we compare iOS and Android, iOS had 304 vulnerabilities in 2007-2013 (294 in 2009-2013), while Android had 29 in 2009-2013[1]. That's order of magnitude difference, yet Android is blamed to be prone to security holes. Also what does "clunky unless you run it on the latest hardware"? All systems are slow, when you run new system on old hardware. You cannot bend physics there. Ever used iOS4 on iPhone 3G? iOS7 on iPhone4? Or why there is no WP8 update for WP7 phones? These are exactly the same reasons. Even the APIs in Play Services, as described in the article, are exactly marked as "google, not android". You project has to explicitly include Google APIs, it is not enough to target Android. Every Android developer knows that. [1] http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15556/ http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15556/ and http://www.cvedetails.com/product/19997/ http://www.cvedetails.com/product/19997/
  - wes-exp 13y ago
    Vulnerability numbers alone do not accurately convey the mobile security landscape. To start with, even if those mean something, we must consider that Android devices tend to lag behind in terms of receiving OS updates. By contrast, iOS devices tend to be quickly updated. It is widely known that iOS is far more secure in the practical sense for the average user. Report: http://www.f-secure.com/static/doc/labs_global/Research/Mobile%20Threat%20Report%20Q4%202012.pdf http://www.f-secure.com/static/doc/labs_global/Research/Mobi...
dave1010uk 13y ago
Small correction: "Chrome is still open source" is incorrect. Chromium is open source. Chrome is closed source.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
yarianluis 13y ago
As an Android developer, I love that Google is doing this! Android has come a very long way in the last few years in terms of usability and design. A large part of this has been due to an increasingly uniform design language and feel. That, and the new distribution model for what are basically Android updates (Google Play Services) has made Android feel more polished and actually allowed it to stand on its own against iOS. It also means that developers like me don't have to spend nearly as much time worrying about fragmentation in the traditional sense. Each day the percentage of people using sub-ICS phones falls, and we all get one step closer to the day we can support ICS+ only. However, companies like Amazon would force me to rewrite the maps integration, the sign-in portion, the wallet, etc... Amazon did a great job of replicating Google Maps API V1 but they have yet to mirror V2 and don't mirror the other components I mentioned. Aside from fragmentation and developer sanity, the article mentions another key point here: "[M]any of Google's solutions offer best-in-class usability, functionality, and ease-of-implementation." Exactly! Google APIs are not perfect, and there's bugs (like when Google Maps broke map markers on high resolution phones like the HTC One). But generally speaking, I'm really happy with the quality of the APIs and services. In an ideal world, Amazon and Google would work together to provide great and uniform single-sign-in APIs, great maps, etc... As it currently stands though, I don't believe either party is interested in doing so. Prisoner's dilemma?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
goggles99 13y ago
Should read more like "Google has an Iron grip on Google Apps (Gapps)" - Not Android. Android is the OS, not the Google service based apps.
- stinos 13y ago
  Isn't the whle point of the article that it's getting harder and harder to get the OS without being tied to Gapps? Which would justify the title?
  - swetland 13y ago
    The Android platform is open source under Apache/BSD/MIT licenses -- it's no harder to get that than it ever has been (not hard at all). Look at products like Kindle Fire for examples of "uses Android without Google Apps".
    - stinos 13y ago
      Yes you can easily just download it. But that's not exactly what the article is about. It's about why OEMs don't just download it and put it on there as such, but instead seem to get tied to Google Apps.
Apocryphon 13y ago
I'm surprised that there's no mention of Tizen, Samsung and Intel's project and supposedly the former's Plan B to ditch Android altogether. With the same TouchWiz skin both Samsung's Android and Tizen, and with both OS's able to run Android apps, the plan would be to swap out the underlying OS without the users noticing.
Tichy 13y ago
By any means necessary? So they'd murder to control the source?
MarkMc 13y ago
As a Google shareholder, this article warms the cockles of my heart. Why should Amazon be able to get all the Android improvements that Google creates?
devx 13y ago
I know this is potentially dangerous in the future (I worry more about NSA having direct access to all the phones in the world through Google), but in terms of user experience, I welcome this. In order to have an ecosystem that is "as unified and standardized as possible" you need to have one company controlling it, and the vision behind it. Too many companies pulling in too many directions is not that good. Here's a different perspective: http://techtainian.com/news/2013/10/20/editorial-how-kitkat-will-reclaim-android-and-unify-holo-with-kennedy http://techtainian.com/news/2013/10/20/editorial-how-kitkat-...
wavesum 13y ago
I don't see how making closed source apps is "Controlling open source"
bsaul 13y ago
I'm curious to know if there are any internal google project of porting all the Google play API on iOS (either on Objective-C , or using a cross-platform language such as mono develop, which would make more sense).
enimodas 13y ago
Wow, I've heard that HN is often pro google, but this thread makes it blatantly clear.
tashoecraft 13y ago
Google is creating a walled garden just like any other company does. The article points to how they are making their shift towards an operating system that is similar to ios (in terms of lock in). Android may be an open-source platform but, on the majority of devices that compete at the top level, it becomes far from open source. It's understandable why Google would lock people out of seeing the back end of their closed apps. But you have to look at what the long-term implications of them slowly removing support for ASOP apps are. As Google continually pushes out fantastic products that tie in so well to the mobile experience, why would anyone/developer want to have/develop [for] anything else. As this power grows, Google can strong-arm phone manufactures to develop hardware/features/etc to work with what they are developing. They have to sign contractual agreements to get the top version of Android and are then locked in to keep up the good terms. Google is outsourcing the hardware manufacturing to other companies and ensuring that if a user wants a good phone, they will be using their services. Many people here are claiming any company can leave Google's garden like Amazon did. While some companies may be able to do that, I'm struggling to think of a one with the technological background, money to invest, and callousness for risk who are willing to try. Amazon has a huge assortment of media that it can toss at its users who use their hardware. Other companies don't have a differentiating factor or the software development to be able to make a truly competitive product to drive people away from Google supported Android. Just look at how much Microsoft, a software giant, is struggling to gain any shred of market share. No executive in any reasonable company is going to propose to invest billions in order to squeeze into the highly competitive mobile OS market. It’s a huge risk that only a startup could swallow, and yet few startups could even raise the money required to topple the Google supported android market. What the future is starting to look like is the one Google was initially afraid of, that users were” faced a Draconian future, a future where…one company, one device, one carrier would be [the] only choice.” As Google gains more power, the open source part that Android users love is going to slowly disappear. This may or may not happen, there are many variables that could prevent it, but it is a future that would bring Google the highest return and that is the goal of all market traded companies.
Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
What's interesting is how having a mobile OS is now only one part of the offering needed to be successful, and is arguably the easiest part. To be successful on mobile you also need a fairly extensive layer of services. Some of those (web, mail and so on) are easy to bolt together but others such as maps and app stores are far harder and are about data and commercial deals as much as they are about software. While it would be wrong to say that these services can't be opened up, in many cases doing so isn't as straight forward as sharing source code. It doesn't feel as if Google has changed so much as what it means be a mobile OS has.
stefanve 13y ago
I don't understand the point of this article especially the bit about being an evil genius by ways of making excellent best in business cross OS api's. Really? being competitive is being an evil genius? If amazon is willing it can open there api's to none FireOS apps they have the infrastructure and money to support it, but they don't. As a user I'm happy that Google is making sure that I can hop device manufactures without loosing my apps or functionality, if everybody would roll out there own app store and removed Google's you would be locked in with the OEM. Now you can safely change to a different phone, also they don't mind you downloading the Google apps when using an alternative ROM. Android is open source but does that mean that you are not aloud to make money of it by providing closed source apps and service, many open source companies do that. The work that went in to Android if freely available for competitors. Lots of kernel enchantments went back in to Linux and now you have Ubuntu touch and Firefox OS both based on the Android kernel which in turn is based on Linux, how cool is that.
Zigurd 13y ago
Part of my business is about creating Android-based embedded systems. So far, none of what Google has done impinges on using Android as a basis for an operating system for appliance-like devices. The main problem is that current development of Android is not done in the open. But, so far, the advantages of using Android's UI stack and other APIs in "appliance OS" applications outweigh the annoyance of sporadic updates to the AOSP code-base. If you want to compete with Google, using Android poses a choice: If you make Google-branded Android devices that use Google's proprietary apps, you will have to give that up in order to use Android with other ecosystems. Thirdly, if you want to use the Google ecosystem in a product, you have to use all of it. You can't substitute someone else's location services, for an example that was litigated. Google could develop Android in the open and retain the same level of control over OEMs, and I think they should. Google appears to be inconsistent in enforcing restrictions on OEMs. OPhone OEMs also make Android handsets, despite the fact that OPhone is an Android derived product. Maybe that arrangement pre-dates Google's current policies.
arikrak 13y ago
Sometimes businesses take measures to increase profits at the expense of their users. However, preventing fragmentation of Android seems to be both in both Google's interests and the users. Only certain competitors could mind. Also, why should Google do all the work of creating an operating system and not get anything in return?
fblp 13y ago
This is an excellent piece of tech journalism and thank you for the journalist for examining each aspect of Google's strategy so thoroughly.
ksk 13y ago
I think Google's malicious intent is being over-exaggerated. It could simply be that they don't have enough resources to maintain old code. As to them creating closed-source apps, well, Google knows which side their bread is buttered on :) Anything that makes money for them is closed source.
heliodor 13y ago
Nothing good can come out of Amazon or Samsung influencing or controlling Android. If those companies were in control, we'd still be in the tech ice ages where the phone companies control our devices.
protomyth 13y ago
IMHO, the unfair part is the following: "Since the Kindle OS counts as an incompatible version of Android, no major OEM is allowed to produce the Kindle Fire for Amazon. So when Amazon goes shopping for a manufacturer for its next tablet, it has to immediately cross Acer, Asus, Dell, Foxconn, Fujitsu, HTC, Huawei, Kyocera, Lenovo, LG, Motorola, NEC, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, and ZTE off the list." Google Apps and APIs are fine and good, but I don't think any company should dictate to an OEM what products they can make for other companies.
at-fates-hands 13y ago
As much as the Android people hate the Apple people, Android is doing the same thing Windows and Apple have been doing for years - trying to shoe horn people into THEIR walled in garden. This is the future of smartphones. You pick a phone and by doing so, you pick the walled garden you're going to most comfortable playing in, pure and simple.
simbolit 13y ago
Why don't they (potential competitors) write an open source app based on openstreetmap? Their mapping data is usually on par, often even superior to that of Google. Plus, its free (in both senses of the word).

414 points by coloneltcb 13y ago

While I can see the point of this article, it's being cast in a much more dramatic light than necessary. Phrases like "While Google is out to devalue the open source codebase as much as possible" seem hyperbolic to me.

andrewflnr 13y ago
I agree. While it does make some good, disturbing points, you can tell they had to stretch to make some of the other points.

rattray 13y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Linus Torvalds famous for his iron grip of Linux? In a very different way, to be sure, but it's my understanding that just because you make something open source doesn't mean you have to (or even should) relinquish control. I think it's also pretty standard to open-source the core and keep the baubles proprietary. GitHub, for example, made their git interaction library open-source but their git hosting service itself is closed, as far as I know.

takluyver 13y ago
Every open source project has someone (or some group) in control, and contributions can't land without their say so. But anyone who feels that the current leadership is doing it wrong can fork the code and try to persuade people to use their version. This is very important to the way open source software works. Google have a level of control beyond that: they undermine anyone trying to fork Android by not letting them use Google's apps and services (even as they allow such use on competing systems like iOS).
- ahomescu1 13y ago
  I have a feeling that if an Android fork actually started to gain serious market share, Google would very quickly allow them to use GMail, Youtube and the other apps.
  - artsrc 13y ago
    Amazon have a Kindle product that is an Android fork with serious market share. I don't know if Google has anything in the Kindle market place with GMail etc.
    - ahomescu1 13y ago
      The Kindle Fire doesn't have the Google Apps, and might never have them, but the Barnes&Noble Nook HD does (I have one), starting a few months ago. It originally didn't (I suspect for the same reason as the Kindle Fire), but Google later allowed B&N to run the apps (B&N even replaced their custom web browser with Chrome, a move which not everyone liked).
- rattray 13y ago
  Sure. That makes perfect sense to me - Google apps and services aren't open source in spirit or practice. If I wanted a pure open-source mobile OS of my own, I wouldn't want any of Google's apps or services tainting it; if I did, Google would evaluate that option on their own, as they should.

MichaelGG 13y ago

The only real thing that seems "evil" is the requirement for OEMs to not manufacture _any_ devices compatible with non-Google forks. The rest of it seems pretty necessary in order to keep carriers and OEMs in line. A lesson Microsoft learned, and why Windows Phone started off by allowing the user to remove any pre-installed crap. If Google didn't do any of this, and was totally altruistic, Samsung and others would already have completely screwed things up. While it's certainly very much to Google's benefit, it also benefits most users because overall, Google has done a far better job than any OEM regarding user experience.

zmmmmm 13y ago
> the requirement for OEMs to not manufacture _any_ devices compatible with non-Google forks Is that really where the line is? My understanding is that it is almost the opposite: an OEM cannot manufacture any devices that break compatibility with AOSP, not support compatibility with a 3rd party fork. And the constraint is a condition of membership of AOSP rather than something imposed directly by Google. They can make things as compatible with as many non-Google forks as they want. They can break all compatibility wherever they want if they give up AOSP membership.
fpgeek 13y ago
In fact, the boundaries of the compatibility requirement are pretty fuzzy. For instance, the Acer/Aliyun situation is more complicated than presented. The Aliyun app store was distributing pirated apps (including pirated Google apps): http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/15/aliyun-app-store-confirmed-to-be-distributing-pirated-android-apps-many-from-another-pirate-site/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/15/aliyun-app-store-con... It seems obvious that Acer would have wound up in hot water with Google over this somehow, though it is odd that Google decided to focus their complaint on compatibility (rather than on Aliyun's piracy). On the other side of the coin, many Android OEMs have distributed (and still distribute, so far as I know) devices without Google apps for the Chinese market (including Samsung, ASUS, Huawei, and even Motorola [1]). So far as I can remember, these were always essentially the same as non-Chinese devices except that they came with a different ROM that didn't include Google Apps. Nevertheless, that means that there's some scope for making non-Google Android devices, we just don't know how far it goes. Maybe if the HTC/Amazon rumors turn out to be true, we'll find out more. [1] Though I think Motorola's efforts were shut-down post-merger because of Google's China policies.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

cloudwalking 13y ago

> Android has arguably won the smartphone wars, but "Android winning" and "Google winning" are not necessarily the same thing. This is false. Google wins when more people use the Internet. Android is fulfilling its initial goal incredibly well: offer a free and open-source mobile OS to encourage mobile device proliferation. Android is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Nerdfest 13y ago
The article's description of what we're to happen if Apple did not have competition is quite accurate and write frightening. Even with the north American market share that Apple has they abuse it where possible.
- gibwell 13y ago
  Apple hasn't abused anything.
- cloudwalking 13y ago
  Yes I agree. Android is not about North America. Android is about India, Africa, and China.
  - Elv13 13y ago
    It is banned from China (AFAIK, they use Alibaba fork). India and Africa are mostly untapped markets. The 80% market share come from America and Europe
    - tomkarlo 13y ago
      That statement is entirely incorrect. http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2012/12/smartphone-market-share-trends-by-country.html#.UmSfthRDsao http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2012/12/smartphone-market-share...
    - zhte415 13y ago
      Android is not banned from (or, in) China. It is hugely popular. See, for example, a popular website's offerings for Android telephones: http://mobile.139shop.com/commend/170__001_1.htm http://mobile.139shop.com/commend/170__001_1.htm Interestingly, in China, and this is personal experience not a market survey, the more one moves away from big brand manufacturers of Android telephones, the more pure / bare-bones / no manufacturer or telecom added applications the Android install is (again, China experience only). I am sitting in mainland China with an Android phone in my pocket. 518 Yuan can easily buy a bright 5 inch screen, 4 days battery life (my average usage) with WiFi on most of the time, only one manufacturer installed app (Baidu input; being in China, this useful), 1.2GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 2 SIM card slots, SD Card slot (free card included, only 2GB, but free is free), 5MP camera (2MP reverse), user serviceable battery.

davyjones 13y ago

> Google does everything in-house. The company gets Maps and all of its cloud services basically for free. This statement is utterly false. In-house does not mean free.

Brakenshire 13y ago
All of its Maps data and many of its APIs already existed for Google Maps on the desktop. Within the mobile space, and relative to a mobile-only competitor, Google's access to that data is effectively free.
- andrewflnr 13y ago
  You mean it has a low marginal cost. However, it required a huge capital investment to create, from which they are now rightfully reaping the benefits.
  - Brakenshire 13y ago
    I'm certainly not saying they are wrong to leverage that asset. I don't think the point is about right or wrong as regards Google's action, but simply the extra barrier this represents for a competitor.
- dirtyaura 13y ago
  Map data for mobile isn't free even for Google. Google buys licenses to the data from a few map data providers, and as there was effectively a duopoly in global map data, those licenses have very strict terms of use. To use that data for e.g. real-time navigation assistance in mobile requires a different, much more expensive licenses.
  - Brakenshire 13y ago
    Good point, thanks for the correction.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

tonyfelice 13y ago

"In an ocean with great waves, whales fly into the air unnoticed, but in a calm pond, even the tiniest minnow makes a ripple." -confucius When the iPhone debuted, no doubt Google sensed the impact, and Apple's ability to create an effective closed ecosystem had already been proven with iTunes. I believe that Google wanted to undermine the market long enough to understand it. True enough, "android winning" was not the same as "Google winning," but it did mean everyone else "losing." I believe that for Google, Android started as a strategy in search of a goal. It was a smokescreen to prevent Apple from taking a dominant position by default. As the data poured in, they began to understand how to leverage it, and the Nexus line became an expression of such understanding, working to establish more control, and hopefully emerge from the smokescreen they had created.

EdwardDiego 13y ago
> whales fly into the air unnoticed Is this the origin of the Twitter fail-whale?
millstone 13y ago
> I believe that for Google, Android started as a strategy in search of a goal. It was a smokescreen to prevent Apple from taking a dominant position by default Impossible. Google bought Android years before Apple sold a single phone.
coopdog 13y ago
I will only buy / recommend nexus phones. Knowing that the phone will be updated quickly and for a long time is worth a premium, rather than being a cash in strat for Google.
- innino 13y ago
  my impression of nexus devices is that you are tied to the package of google services. is this so, or can a nexus-user break free from google's domain and enjoy the benefits of a quality low-cost device without being beholden to the google ecosystem?

yeet 13y ago

google had a very good reason to move services outside AOSP, to update them without relying on carriers. they could release billing API v3 w/ 90% compatibility in day 1. this is how they could workaround fragmentation. as an android dev, i love being able to read framework source code for better design, performance and less bugs. that is all really matters imho.

zobzu 13y ago
for development yes, thats like providing a SDK. I can develop just fine on Windows phones and even iOS :) So basically, its not really all that opensource anymore, that's what most people mean.
- yeet 13y ago
  it is not the same with providing an SDK. Well, if android was documented better, we would not need source code this much but most of the time, it requires checking the actual implementation to understand the whole picture. Probably it is the difference between being "just fine" to creating great things.

cremnob 13y ago

Open always wins, until it conflicts with your business interests. "Open" used to be the oft-repeated advantage over iOS in the early days, I wonder if that will slip away from the narrative like "SD card slots", "removable batteries", and "real keyboard" did.

TylerE 13y ago
History doesn't really support this. Even Linux had to get some corporate backing (initially Red Hat, Suse, and the like), and later Canonical and others before it really took off. Open source has proven to be a long term survivor, but not a winner.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  Open source is most definitely winning in infrastructure, high performance computing, servers, etc... Ask IBM or Oracle if Linux is losing...
  - TylerE 13y ago
    You're conflating the reasons though...would Linux be winning in those areas without big corporate $$$?
    - andrewflnr 13y ago
      I was going to say, "well, most people aren't actually using a corporate-sponsored distro", but I guess the real question is whether Linux would have become the impressive piece of technology it is today without corporate backing, if there had never been anyone working on it full-time. Maybe FreeBSD would have taken it's place if Linus didn't have enough time to work on it. Either way, it's really hard for me to imagine a non-open system in this position of dominance.
    - Mikeb85 13y ago
      Does it matter? Corporations adopted Linux because of it's openness, and Linux is winning in those areas because of corporations who adopted it because of.... Open doesn't mean 'hobbyist', it merely refers to the freedoms enabled by the code's license...

lnanek2 13y ago

What's really annoying is when the Google apps start becoming worse to make Google more money. I never open the app store without wanting an app, but it constantly tries to sell me books and movies and stuff like that. They even have separate Google apps for reading and movies, so shoving it in the app store is just a money grab making my usage more difficult to shove some ads in my face. Were these apps open source people could just fork, but we're stuck going along with Google until they mess up so bad it makes sense to switch over entirely to Amazon App store, Samsung Apps Seller, etc. and the equivalent for everything else.

cremnob 13y ago
This is an opportunity for Yahoo. The article mentions that OEMs can't leave because they're afraid of losing Google services, Yahoo can be that replacement. They've been making beautiful mobile apps lately and they have some very polished services. They are a pure play service provider who isn't trying to compete with the OEMs; they have no conflict of interest. If you work at Yahoo, this is something you should run up the chain. A relationship with OEMs would solve their problems, and allow you to get a foothold in mobile that you haven't been able to before.
- tapsboy 13y ago
  Yahoo internals were even discussing ideas of creating their own fork of Android, way back in 2010. Nothing happened.

georgestephanis 13y ago

Well, this is really arguable. The "Iron Grip" is the modules that happen to be dependent on authenticated API calls to the servers that Google owns and maintains. I'd fully support their modules that connect to the cloud servers being open source / GPL / etc, but to expect them to open them up to unauthenticated requests is untenable and leaves them way open to abuse / lack of rate limiting / making the service a bad time for all involved.

Brakenshire 13y ago
> Well, this is really arguable. The "Iron Grip" is the modules that happen to be dependent on authenticated API calls to the servers that Google owns and maintains. It also consists of witholding access to those APIs if a company uses a competitor service: > Another point of control is that the Google apps are all licensed as a single bundle. So if you want Gmail and Maps, you also need to take Google Play Services, Google+, and whatever else Google feels like adding to the package. A company called Skyhook found this out the hard way when it tried to develop a competing location service for Android. Switching to Skyhook's service meant Google would not be able to collect location data from users. This was bad for Google, so Skyhook was declared "incompatible." OEMs that wanted the Google Apps were not allowed to use them. Skyhook sued, and the lawsuit is still pending.

Brakenshire 13y ago

> While it might not be an official requirement, being granted a Google apps license will go a whole lot easier if you join the Open Handset Alliance. The OHA is a group of companies committed to Android—Google's Android—and members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devices. That's right, joining the OHA requires a company to sign its life away and promise to not build a device that runs a competing Android fork. ... > This makes life extremely difficult for the only company brazen enough to sell an Android fork in the west: Amazon. Since the Kindle OS counts as an incompatible version of Android, no major OEM is allowed to produce the Kindle Fire for Amazon. So when Amazon goes shopping for a manufacturer for its next tablet, it has to immediately cross Acer, Asus, Dell, Foxconn, Fujitsu, HTC, Huawei, Kyocera, Lenovo, LG, Motorola, NEC, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, and ZTE off the list. Currently, Amazon contracts Kindle manufacturing out to Quanta Computer, a company primarily known for making laptops. Amazon probably doesn't have many other choices. That is fairly incredible, I'm surprised it is not an anti-trust/competition issue.

Mikeb85 13y ago
It's not anti-trust because they're not required to only build Android devices. HTC and Samsung also build Windows Phone devices...
icebraining 13y ago
Are you serious? What other commercial OS can I do a competing fork of? Don't you see that the same restrictions apply to all other consumer OSs (iOS, WP, etc) by simply being closed-source?
- Brakenshire 13y ago
  That's a fair point, but Android is open source (and indeed was heavily marketed on that basis). They don't get to use any mechanism they like to make the situation comparable to their closed competitors. Their situation is also not comparable to iOS, WP, etc, because of their position of market dominance, just the same as the situation with Windows and Mac OS back in the day.

parennoob 13y ago

When someone like Github does this (make some parts of their code open-source, but others closed-source), journalists don't write critical pieces about them, do they? I mean, Google leaves a bad taste in my mouth since they started shuttering services like it was Christmas at the Google Service Chopping Block, but I don't see them being actively evil here. It's all according to the previously openly aired plan. Google keeps all of the existing code open source. Anyone who wants to build a fork can do so. Now if they want a hardware platform to run on, go find one outside the Open Handset Alliance ecosystem. It's fair game -- if a hardware partner thinks that one of Google's competitors can provide a better Android fork, they are free to leave the Alliance and go partner with that competitor. They will still get an enormous amount of code for free in AOSP. They just won't get all of the services that Google is building specifically for its own version of Android. How is any of this maintaining an "iron grip" in any way? Just contrast this with Apple where it is the sole owner of everything to do with the OS and app marketplace.

gibwell 13y ago
Google used 'Android is open' as a dishonest slogan to convince developers that it wasn't just a power play. That is why they are being criticized. It's not about who is more open. It's that Google misled everyone about their intentions.
- afsina 13y ago
  Prove that Android is not open.
  - devcpp 13y ago
    He meant free (as in freedom), not open. "Proof" of that is in the submission's article. It's not exactly a formal proof but it has convinced most people here. Unfortunately, this highlights some weaknesses in the GPLv2, which is supposed to guarantee freedom.
    - rsynnott 13y ago

cromwellian 13y ago

Most of the examples of Google closed apps that are not part of the AOSP release are in fact apps that are based off of Google data-center services. Would it really help Samsung if the source to the Gmail app was open? Since Google controls the server side, and the client-server protocol, it limits the amount of innovation they can do. The web equivalent would be like claiming that Chrome OS isn't open because the source to Gmail isn't available. Google is stuck behind a rock and a hard place. If they don't try to create incentives for a unified experience, they get bashed for encouraging fragmentation, if they do assert a level of control, they get bashed for not being completely open.

fpgeek 13y ago
And, in fact, the same author made the exact same point about Google Play Services being a big tool Google is using to get past OS version fragmentation about a month-and-a-half ago: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/balky-carriers-and-slow-oems-step-aside-google-is-defragging-android/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/balky-carriers-and-sl...
- dannyr 13y ago
  The author was all-praises on Google for its actions. "Not having to package everything into a major OS update means Google can get features out to more users much faster and more frequently than before. ... This should all lead to a more unified, less fragmented, healthier Android ecosystem."
dmethvin 13y ago
> Google is stuck behind a rock and a hard place. If they don't try to create incentives for a unified experience, they get bashed for encouraging fragmentation, if they do assert a level of control, they get bashed for not being completely open. This is exactly the position Microsoft was in during the mid-1990s, even before they went after Netscape. The article is saying that Google is even applying some of the same strong-arm tactics to keep OEMs in line. Fortunately, Google can point to Apple and say they're not a monopoly the way Microsoft was in its market. Plus, Android still looks really open compared to iOS.

pazimzadeh 13y ago

So, every Samsung phone effectively comes with three versions of the main apps - the AOSP version, the Google Play version, and Samsung's bloatware? This seems like a terrible situation for users. Can someone with a Samsung smartphone confirm this? If this is the case, how are the apps organized when you first buy the phone - are they all in one big apps list?

hrkristian 13y ago
Samsung devices ship with two versions, remember that while Samsung can't opt out of the Google apps, they're free to remove any AOSP app they'd like. In fact, I've had AOSP apps disappear from my Cyanogen Mod ROM when I installed gapps, although I don't know if that was due to being overwritten or just part of the install script.

Mikeb85 13y ago

I think alot of people misunderstand what open source means. It's nothing more than allowing people to see the source code, and use it (including forking). Open source doesn't require you to cooperate with anyone, it doesn't require you to give away access to APIs, it doesn't require you to do anything beyond whatever is explicitly stated in the license. Google, Canonical, Oracle, IBM, Red Hat, SUSE, etc... aren't required to be good team players or corporate citizens. They're just required to abide by the terms of the licenses on code they use...

Brakenshire 13y ago
Well, there is a philosophy (or rather, various different philosophies) that go along with the legal structures, and different projects have different levels of adherence to those ideas. It eventually comes down to perception of value. Part of the original attraction of Android was its openness, if Google is now closing off substantial functionality, to head off competition, then it's not unfair for people to re-evaluate their enthusiasm for the product.
- oscargrouch 13y ago
  > Part of the original attraction of Android was its openness, if Google is now closing off substantial functionality, to head off competition, then it's not unfair for people to re-evaluate their enthusiasm for the product. Very well put! Its not a legal perception that theres something wrong about what they are doing(and nobody are saying that they cannot do it in the legal aspect).. its a betrayal of some part that make people defend android for what it is, a open source project.. its the ideal behind the project that is being broken If its not like that anymore, the same people that support it for its openess should be aware of it.. and see that things are actually, gradually and silently changing..
  - Apocryphon 13y ago
    Perhaps there should be a phrase to mean "open source in name only." I wonder if all of this is related to Richard Stallman's dismissal of projects that claim to be open source, saying that it isn't enough unless it's "free software."

EGreg 13y ago

If AOSP is open source and Google updates let's say the location services, why can't anyone start a similar project for AOSP and have it funded (like by Apache or Mozilla)? It seems that the main problem is the gatekeepers who manufacture phones.

hayksaakian 13y ago
That, or someone to maintain a generic shim/interface so that the proprietary services are interchangeable
zobzu 13y ago
Mozilla makes Firefox OS. They don't have the resources to also fix Android and what not, I think. Apache takes a few projects under its wing but they don't provide the developers, and thus many of their projects are stalling.

millstone 13y ago

> Google was terrified that Apple would end up ruling the mobile space. So, to help in the fight against the iPhone at a time when Google had no mobile foothold whatsoever, it was decided that Google would buy Android. And Android would be open source. This is blatantly false. Google bought Android in 2005, two years before the iPhone was announced.

rarepostinlurkr 13y ago
Almost exactly a year after they bought Android, Schmidt joined the Apple board of directors. The iPhone certainly was in development some time prior to its announcement.
- Shooti 13y ago
  Schmidt joined the Apple board August 29th 2006: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/08/29Google-CEO-Dr-Eric-Schmidt-Joins-Apples-Board-of-Directors.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/08/29Google-CEO-Dr-Eric... Public iPhone announcement was January 9th 2007: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-the-Phone-with-iPhone.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-th... Even with a conspiracy angle, a three month head start isn't much.
hackula1 13y ago
Android clearly went in a different direction post-iPhone.
- saiyan 13y ago
  Agreed. All those videos of Android demo or prototype units clearly showed Android was a Blackberry clone (just look at that tiny touchpad for navigating around Android OS) and changed its design direction after iPhone made its appearance.
  - bookwormAT 13y ago
    nonesense. Android is a software platform that companies can build sofware and devices on. Android is not a device, and it's not an "operating system" in the sense that people use this word today. It is a fundament that you can build an operating system with, and a cross platform that allows applications run on different software, as long as this software is based on Android. If you want to show off what Android can do, you put it on all kinds of devices that people are using at the moment. If everyone has a Blackberry, you want to show that you can make a software for Blackberrys based on Android. If everyone is hyped on digital cameras, you show a software and ui for such a camera. Android used to have 3 prototypes in its early stages: a blackberry type, a tablet-type device, and the device that later became the Tmobile G1, the first android phone. The platform never changed course, and it clearly never was a Blackberry clone.

peterashford 13y ago

Claiming that Google is "controlling open source" by working in-house on it's own Android applications is just really bizarre.

alexandros 13y ago

So I guess the sign to look out for is Samsung licensing the Amazon APIs?

thethimble 13y ago
That would be interesting: an Amazon-Samsung software-hardware partnership.

sriramyadavalli 13y ago

Nothing wrong with what Google is doing. Google is essentially a consumer (and enterprise) cloud services company that is looking to commoditize (read open source/sell at cost) all other parts of the stack. That includes open-sourcing Chrome/Android, selling Chromecast/Google Fiber at cost.

x0054 13y ago

I once read an article in 2010 that criticized people for saying that Apple and iOS of the 2000s is like the Microsoft and Windows of the 90s. The article pointed out that Apple IS the Apple of the 90s and Google with its Android platform will become the Windows of the 90s. I think it's happening. In a few years Android is going to be as closed sourced as Windows, probably as ubiquitous, and most likely, just as prone to security issues. It's already kind of like windows, no? It runs on hundreds if different devices. It's often bloated by OEM software that people hate. It's prone to security wholes. It's slow and clunky unless you run it on the latest hardware. It bends over backwards for compatibility sake. It's more and more closed sourced... Android is Mobile windows of the 90s. I hope Ubuntu Mobile will be successful.

vetinari 13y ago
Sorry, but some of the things you wrote are about perception, not reality. What does "prone to security issues" mean? And compared to what? When we compare iOS and Android, iOS had 304 vulnerabilities in 2007-2013 (294 in 2009-2013), while Android had 29 in 2009-2013[1]. That's order of magnitude difference, yet Android is blamed to be prone to security holes. Also what does "clunky unless you run it on the latest hardware"? All systems are slow, when you run new system on old hardware. You cannot bend physics there. Ever used iOS4 on iPhone 3G? iOS7 on iPhone4? Or why there is no WP8 update for WP7 phones? These are exactly the same reasons. Even the APIs in Play Services, as described in the article, are exactly marked as "google, not android". You project has to explicitly include Google APIs, it is not enough to target Android. Every Android developer knows that. [1] http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15556/ http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15556/ and http://www.cvedetails.com/product/19997/ http://www.cvedetails.com/product/19997/
- wes-exp 13y ago
  Vulnerability numbers alone do not accurately convey the mobile security landscape. To start with, even if those mean something, we must consider that Android devices tend to lag behind in terms of receiving OS updates. By contrast, iOS devices tend to be quickly updated. It is widely known that iOS is far more secure in the practical sense for the average user. Report: http://www.f-secure.com/static/doc/labs_global/Research/Mobile%20Threat%20Report%20Q4%202012.pdf http://www.f-secure.com/static/doc/labs_global/Research/Mobi...

dave1010uk 13y ago

Small correction: "Chrome is still open source" is incorrect. Chromium is open source. Chrome is closed source.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

yarianluis 13y ago

As an Android developer, I love that Google is doing this! Android has come a very long way in the last few years in terms of usability and design. A large part of this has been due to an increasingly uniform design language and feel. That, and the new distribution model for what are basically Android updates (Google Play Services) has made Android feel more polished and actually allowed it to stand on its own against iOS. It also means that developers like me don't have to spend nearly as much time worrying about fragmentation in the traditional sense. Each day the percentage of people using sub-ICS phones falls, and we all get one step closer to the day we can support ICS+ only. However, companies like Amazon would force me to rewrite the maps integration, the sign-in portion, the wallet, etc... Amazon did a great job of replicating Google Maps API V1 but they have yet to mirror V2 and don't mirror the other components I mentioned. Aside from fragmentation and developer sanity, the article mentions another key point here: "[M]any of Google's solutions offer best-in-class usability, functionality, and ease-of-implementation." Exactly! Google APIs are not perfect, and there's bugs (like when Google Maps broke map markers on high resolution phones like the HTC One). But generally speaking, I'm really happy with the quality of the APIs and services. In an ideal world, Amazon and Google would work together to provide great and uniform single-sign-in APIs, great maps, etc... As it currently stands though, I don't believe either party is interested in doing so. Prisoner's dilemma?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

goggles99 13y ago

Should read more like "Google has an Iron grip on Google Apps (Gapps)" - Not Android. Android is the OS, not the Google service based apps.

stinos 13y ago
Isn't the whle point of the article that it's getting harder and harder to get the OS without being tied to Gapps? Which would justify the title?
- swetland 13y ago
  The Android platform is open source under Apache/BSD/MIT licenses -- it's no harder to get that than it ever has been (not hard at all). Look at products like Kindle Fire for examples of "uses Android without Google Apps".
  - stinos 13y ago
    Yes you can easily just download it. But that's not exactly what the article is about. It's about why OEMs don't just download it and put it on there as such, but instead seem to get tied to Google Apps.

Apocryphon 13y ago

I'm surprised that there's no mention of Tizen, Samsung and Intel's project and supposedly the former's Plan B to ditch Android altogether. With the same TouchWiz skin both Samsung's Android and Tizen, and with both OS's able to run Android apps, the plan would be to swap out the underlying OS without the users noticing.

Tichy 13y ago

By any means necessary? So they'd murder to control the source?

MarkMc 13y ago

As a Google shareholder, this article warms the cockles of my heart. Why should Amazon be able to get all the Android improvements that Google creates?

devx 13y ago

I know this is potentially dangerous in the future (I worry more about NSA having direct access to all the phones in the world through Google), but in terms of user experience, I welcome this. In order to have an ecosystem that is "as unified and standardized as possible" you need to have one company controlling it, and the vision behind it. Too many companies pulling in too many directions is not that good. Here's a different perspective: http://techtainian.com/news/2013/10/20/editorial-how-kitkat-will-reclaim-android-and-unify-holo-with-kennedy http://techtainian.com/news/2013/10/20/editorial-how-kitkat-...

wavesum 13y ago

I don't see how making closed source apps is "Controlling open source"

bsaul 13y ago

I'm curious to know if there are any internal google project of porting all the Google play API on iOS (either on Objective-C , or using a cross-platform language such as mono develop, which would make more sense).

enimodas 13y ago

Wow, I've heard that HN is often pro google, but this thread makes it blatantly clear.

tashoecraft 13y ago

Google is creating a walled garden just like any other company does. The article points to how they are making their shift towards an operating system that is similar to ios (in terms of lock in). Android may be an open-source platform but, on the majority of devices that compete at the top level, it becomes far from open source. It's understandable why Google would lock people out of seeing the back end of their closed apps. But you have to look at what the long-term implications of them slowly removing support for ASOP apps are. As Google continually pushes out fantastic products that tie in so well to the mobile experience, why would anyone/developer want to have/develop [for] anything else. As this power grows, Google can strong-arm phone manufactures to develop hardware/features/etc to work with what they are developing. They have to sign contractual agreements to get the top version of Android and are then locked in to keep up the good terms. Google is outsourcing the hardware manufacturing to other companies and ensuring that if a user wants a good phone, they will be using their services. Many people here are claiming any company can leave Google's garden like Amazon did. While some companies may be able to do that, I'm struggling to think of a one with the technological background, money to invest, and callousness for risk who are willing to try. Amazon has a huge assortment of media that it can toss at its users who use their hardware. Other companies don't have a differentiating factor or the software development to be able to make a truly competitive product to drive people away from Google supported Android. Just look at how much Microsoft, a software giant, is struggling to gain any shred of market share. No executive in any reasonable company is going to propose to invest billions in order to squeeze into the highly competitive mobile OS market. It’s a huge risk that only a startup could swallow, and yet few startups could even raise the money required to topple the Google supported android market. What the future is starting to look like is the one Google was initially afraid of, that users were” faced a Draconian future, a future where…one company, one device, one carrier would be [the] only choice.” As Google gains more power, the open source part that Android users love is going to slowly disappear. This may or may not happen, there are many variables that could prevent it, but it is a future that would bring Google the highest return and that is the goal of all market traded companies.

Tyrannosaurs 13y ago

What's interesting is how having a mobile OS is now only one part of the offering needed to be successful, and is arguably the easiest part. To be successful on mobile you also need a fairly extensive layer of services. Some of those (web, mail and so on) are easy to bolt together but others such as maps and app stores are far harder and are about data and commercial deals as much as they are about software. While it would be wrong to say that these services can't be opened up, in many cases doing so isn't as straight forward as sharing source code. It doesn't feel as if Google has changed so much as what it means be a mobile OS has.

stefanve 13y ago

I don't understand the point of this article especially the bit about being an evil genius by ways of making excellent best in business cross OS api's. Really? being competitive is being an evil genius? If amazon is willing it can open there api's to none FireOS apps they have the infrastructure and money to support it, but they don't. As a user I'm happy that Google is making sure that I can hop device manufactures without loosing my apps or functionality, if everybody would roll out there own app store and removed Google's you would be locked in with the OEM. Now you can safely change to a different phone, also they don't mind you downloading the Google apps when using an alternative ROM. Android is open source but does that mean that you are not aloud to make money of it by providing closed source apps and service, many open source companies do that. The work that went in to Android if freely available for competitors. Lots of kernel enchantments went back in to Linux and now you have Ubuntu touch and Firefox OS both based on the Android kernel which in turn is based on Linux, how cool is that.

Zigurd 13y ago

Part of my business is about creating Android-based embedded systems. So far, none of what Google has done impinges on using Android as a basis for an operating system for appliance-like devices. The main problem is that current development of Android is not done in the open. But, so far, the advantages of using Android's UI stack and other APIs in "appliance OS" applications outweigh the annoyance of sporadic updates to the AOSP code-base. If you want to compete with Google, using Android poses a choice: If you make Google-branded Android devices that use Google's proprietary apps, you will have to give that up in order to use Android with other ecosystems. Thirdly, if you want to use the Google ecosystem in a product, you have to use all of it. You can't substitute someone else's location services, for an example that was litigated. Google could develop Android in the open and retain the same level of control over OEMs, and I think they should. Google appears to be inconsistent in enforcing restrictions on OEMs. OPhone OEMs also make Android handsets, despite the fact that OPhone is an Android derived product. Maybe that arrangement pre-dates Google's current policies.

arikrak 13y ago

Sometimes businesses take measures to increase profits at the expense of their users. However, preventing fragmentation of Android seems to be both in both Google's interests and the users. Only certain competitors could mind. Also, why should Google do all the work of creating an operating system and not get anything in return?

fblp 13y ago

This is an excellent piece of tech journalism and thank you for the journalist for examining each aspect of Google's strategy so thoroughly.

ksk 13y ago

I think Google's malicious intent is being over-exaggerated. It could simply be that they don't have enough resources to maintain old code. As to them creating closed-source apps, well, Google knows which side their bread is buttered on :) Anything that makes money for them is closed source.

heliodor 13y ago

Nothing good can come out of Amazon or Samsung influencing or controlling Android. If those companies were in control, we'd still be in the tech ice ages where the phone companies control our devices.

protomyth 13y ago

IMHO, the unfair part is the following: "Since the Kindle OS counts as an incompatible version of Android, no major OEM is allowed to produce the Kindle Fire for Amazon. So when Amazon goes shopping for a manufacturer for its next tablet, it has to immediately cross Acer, Asus, Dell, Foxconn, Fujitsu, HTC, Huawei, Kyocera, Lenovo, LG, Motorola, NEC, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, and ZTE off the list." Google Apps and APIs are fine and good, but I don't think any company should dictate to an OEM what products they can make for other companies.

at-fates-hands 13y ago

As much as the Android people hate the Apple people, Android is doing the same thing Windows and Apple have been doing for years - trying to shoe horn people into THEIR walled in garden. This is the future of smartphones. You pick a phone and by doing so, you pick the walled garden you're going to most comfortable playing in, pure and simple.

simbolit 13y ago

Why don't they (potential competitors) write an open source app based on openstreetmap? Their mapping data is usually on par, often even superior to that of Google. Plus, its free (in both senses of the word).