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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 re

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.
- cremnob 13y ago
  I don't think Apple will be a good defense if Android's market share is 80%.
  - kbenson 13y ago
    That depends on how the market share of revenue looks as well, and to my knowledge the percentage of revenue Apple receives is not dropping nearly as fast (and Google's not the main competitor there, Samsung is, even if it's using Google software).
  - hackula1 13y ago
    80% does not a monopoly make. Microsoft was in an entirely different position at the time.
    - throwawaykf 13y ago
      Percentage of market share is not a clear indication of monopoly. From what I could find, 50% is typically the bare minimum to warrant consideration, and 70 - 75% will get more serious scrutiny. Also, it differs from country to country. In the UK, Tesco was investigated even though it had a market share of only 30%. I also recall reading one of the EU's regulators (was it Joaquin Almunia?) say that (paraphrasing) "we start sniffing around when any one party gets a market share north of 60%." Unfortunately, I cannot find that article.
      - fauigerzigerk 13y ago
        >Percentage of market share is not a clear indication of monopoly True, and the reason is that a 30% UK-wide or a 50% Europe-wide market share can easily turn out to be a 100% market share in many local markets. Tesco defended itself by saying that 98% of consumers have access to five different super market chains within a drive time radius of 30 minutes. Make that a more realistic 10 minutes and the picture changes dramatically.
    - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
bad_user 13y ago
You're partly right, but in regards to the Gmail app, what I don't like about Android is that it doesn't come with a good email client that's not GMail. Android's GMail client is very polished and there's not much in it that's specific to Gmail, it could be a generic email client that works with POP3/IMAP/SMTP and other standards as well. The experience of users that aren't into Android's own services do suffer. But I do not agree with people that claim Android is not open. Building an operating system is a big challenge and stock Android is enough for anyone to fork and do whatever they want. I actually play around with an old Galaxy S on top of which I installed Cyanogenmod without any of Google's Apps. The only problem is that developers only publish their apps on Google Play, which is a shame, given that Android does allow you to install apps from third party sources and you could have a good experience just with stock Android. I ended up installing Amazon's Appstore on it, which is not as good as Google Play, but at least they've got special offers :-)
- eYsYs 13y ago
  > What I don't like about Android is that it doesn't come with a good email client that's not GMail. That would be like saying that the default camera app does not come with filters, shaders and other features that you like. What Google does is, gives a good enough app for generic use and leaves options open for developers to make better things and put them on the Play Store. If Google starts incorporating all such features, it'll get much more difficult for developers to earn through the store.
  - bad_user 13y ago
    Yeah, but the email app on iOS is pretty polished and nowadays people expect the stock browser and the stock email app to be pretty good, especially on mobile devices. I'm not saying that Android's out of the box functionality should encompass everything, just the basic necessities, like email and web browsing. And I don't want people without an Android to get the wrong idea - Android does come with a standard email client, it's just that it's much, much less polished than the GMail app, which is a shame.
- bgaluszka 13y ago
apetrovic 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. I don't think Google's development of their own services is issue here. The issue, in my understanding, is that Google ties its services to Android under "Android compatibility" label. Skyhook is a great example (the article mentions it) - mapping is important for Google, and Google literally pushed the company out of business by strong-arming manufacturers to stop using Skyhook services. Can, say, Samsung make a deal with Yahoo to drop gmail, include only Yahoo mail on their phones and still pass "compatibility" test in Google, and have access to Google Play store and the rest of the services? Can you imagine HTC phone with Nokia maps? (speaking of maps and Nokia, anyone is quick to point that Nokia made a huge mistake not betting on Android as Symbian replacement. And couple of months ago we saw that mapping is so important to Nokia that they're ready to let negotiations with Microsoft fail just to keep mapping in their hands. Does anyone thinks that Nokia would be permitted to make Android phones with Nokia maps?) The fact that Google services are (mostly) better than competition isn't relevant here - back in the day Internet Explorer was way better than Netscape Navigator, but that fact didn't made MS actions any better.
- hahainternet 13y ago
  > Google literally pushed the company out of business by strong-arming manufacturers to stop using Skyhook services. This is what Skyhook claimed, but the reality was much different. Skyhook were intentionally or unintentionally polluting the Google AP database. They refused to change and so failed the compatability test. Look into this more.
- cromwellian 13y ago
  I think there is some legitimacy to this line of criticism, but as Amazon has shown, large organizations can produce their own forks. I can imagine too that selective replacement of chunks of the 'Google Experience' might make consumers get a negative impression of the Google brand if the replacement has issues. Like if you replace the location with Skyhook or Nokia, and the new Maps app is just called "Maps", and if there are serious issues, consumers might say "Man, this Google Maps on Android sucks!" without realizing it's not Google Maps, because Android is strongly brand associated with Google. There's also a logical rational for Amazon-style forking, in the sense that if you're going for a complete reskinning, the end result will likely be a lot better if it is completely horizontally and vertically integrated by a single vendor rather than cobbled together -- 'bloatware' experience.
r0h1n 13y ago
Aren't we forgetting about the closed-source elephant in the room - Google Play Services - the "platform behind the platform"? >> Play Services has system-level powers, but it's updatable. It's part of the Google apps package, so it's not open source. OEMs are not allowed to modify it, making it completely under Google's control. Play Services basically acts as a shim between the normal apps and the installed Android OS. Right now Play Services handles the Google Maps API, Google Account syncing, remote wipe, push messages, the Play Games back end, and many other duties. If you ever question the power of Google Play Services, try disabling it. Nearly every Google App on your device will break. [Source: 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...]
- bad_user 13y ago
  Google Play Services are not (currently) required for developing and running apps, unless those apps integrate with Google's services, like Google Accounts and Google Maps. Of course nearly every Google App will break if you disable it, since every Google App is proprietary and Google's Play Services is their common framework. The question is - do third-party apps break if you disable Google Play Services? And the answer is that it depends. If the app needs Google's services then it will stop working. However, making Play Services open-source, at least for the functionality provided right now, wouldn't do any good. Because those services rely on Google's server-side infrastructure, so you're still at their mercy. The only thing that bothers me is the Wifi-based location tracking. Google collects info about nearby Wifi networks and so the phone is able to give a pretty good estimate of latitude/longitude coordinates, even without turning the GPS on. Turning Google Play Services off means that Wifi-based location tracking stops working. And this is a pain, given that many apps these days (Facebook, Twitter) want to get your current city and so Facebook for example is accessing my GPS every time I open the app, with no way to turn this functionality off and it's consuming my battery and the GPS status notifier is annoying. In case you're wondering I had to turn Wifi-based location tracking because of a bug in the latest Android 4.3, as it is preventing my Nexus 4 to go to sleep, thus draining my battery.
  - 13y ago
throwaway2048 13y ago
Hypothetically, if you made all parts of android rely on "Google Data center services" would moves to close it off be justified? This is what Play Services are moving towards.
guenlo 13y ago
>off of Learn English, and then we'll talk.
- eropple 13y ago
  "Off of" has been an English construction since the 1500s. It's entirely reasonable and appropriate in this context, much like contractions in informal written English. But I'm fairly sure I'm replying to a throwaway account, so it's not like you were seriously interested.

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.

cremnob 13y ago
I don't think Apple will be a good defense if Android's market share is 80%.
- kbenson 13y ago
  That depends on how the market share of revenue looks as well, and to my knowledge the percentage of revenue Apple receives is not dropping nearly as fast (and Google's not the main competitor there, Samsung is, even if it's using Google software).
- hackula1 13y ago
  80% does not a monopoly make. Microsoft was in an entirely different position at the time.
  - throwawaykf 13y ago
    Percentage of market share is not a clear indication of monopoly. From what I could find, 50% is typically the bare minimum to warrant consideration, and 70 - 75% will get more serious scrutiny. Also, it differs from country to country. In the UK, Tesco was investigated even though it had a market share of only 30%. I also recall reading one of the EU's regulators (was it Joaquin Almunia?) say that (paraphrasing) "we start sniffing around when any one party gets a market share north of 60%." Unfortunately, I cannot find that article.
    - fauigerzigerk 13y ago
      >Percentage of market share is not a clear indication of monopoly True, and the reason is that a 30% UK-wide or a 50% Europe-wide market share can easily turn out to be a 100% market share in many local markets. Tesco defended itself by saying that 98% of consumers have access to five different super market chains within a drive time radius of 30 minutes. Make that a more realistic 10 minutes and the picture changes dramatically.
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago

bad_user 13y ago

You're partly right, but in regards to the Gmail app, what I don't like about Android is that it doesn't come with a good email client that's not GMail. Android's GMail client is very polished and there's not much in it that's specific to Gmail, it could be a generic email client that works with POP3/IMAP/SMTP and other standards as well. The experience of users that aren't into Android's own services do suffer. But I do not agree with people that claim Android is not open. Building an operating system is a big challenge and stock Android is enough for anyone to fork and do whatever they want. I actually play around with an old Galaxy S on top of which I installed Cyanogenmod without any of Google's Apps. The only problem is that developers only publish their apps on Google Play, which is a shame, given that Android does allow you to install apps from third party sources and you could have a good experience just with stock Android. I ended up installing Amazon's Appstore on it, which is not as good as Google Play, but at least they've got special offers :-)

eYsYs 13y ago
> What I don't like about Android is that it doesn't come with a good email client that's not GMail. That would be like saying that the default camera app does not come with filters, shaders and other features that you like. What Google does is, gives a good enough app for generic use and leaves options open for developers to make better things and put them on the Play Store. If Google starts incorporating all such features, it'll get much more difficult for developers to earn through the store.
- bad_user 13y ago
  Yeah, but the email app on iOS is pretty polished and nowadays people expect the stock browser and the stock email app to be pretty good, especially on mobile devices. I'm not saying that Android's out of the box functionality should encompass everything, just the basic necessities, like email and web browsing. And I don't want people without an Android to get the wrong idea - Android does come with a standard email client, it's just that it's much, much less polished than the GMail app, which is a shame.
bgaluszka 13y ago

apetrovic 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. I don't think Google's development of their own services is issue here. The issue, in my understanding, is that Google ties its services to Android under "Android compatibility" label. Skyhook is a great example (the article mentions it) - mapping is important for Google, and Google literally pushed the company out of business by strong-arming manufacturers to stop using Skyhook services. Can, say, Samsung make a deal with Yahoo to drop gmail, include only Yahoo mail on their phones and still pass "compatibility" test in Google, and have access to Google Play store and the rest of the services? Can you imagine HTC phone with Nokia maps? (speaking of maps and Nokia, anyone is quick to point that Nokia made a huge mistake not betting on Android as Symbian replacement. And couple of months ago we saw that mapping is so important to Nokia that they're ready to let negotiations with Microsoft fail just to keep mapping in their hands. Does anyone thinks that Nokia would be permitted to make Android phones with Nokia maps?) The fact that Google services are (mostly) better than competition isn't relevant here - back in the day Internet Explorer was way better than Netscape Navigator, but that fact didn't made MS actions any better.

hahainternet 13y ago
> Google literally pushed the company out of business by strong-arming manufacturers to stop using Skyhook services. This is what Skyhook claimed, but the reality was much different. Skyhook were intentionally or unintentionally polluting the Google AP database. They refused to change and so failed the compatability test. Look into this more.
cromwellian 13y ago
I think there is some legitimacy to this line of criticism, but as Amazon has shown, large organizations can produce their own forks. I can imagine too that selective replacement of chunks of the 'Google Experience' might make consumers get a negative impression of the Google brand if the replacement has issues. Like if you replace the location with Skyhook or Nokia, and the new Maps app is just called "Maps", and if there are serious issues, consumers might say "Man, this Google Maps on Android sucks!" without realizing it's not Google Maps, because Android is strongly brand associated with Google. There's also a logical rational for Amazon-style forking, in the sense that if you're going for a complete reskinning, the end result will likely be a lot better if it is completely horizontally and vertically integrated by a single vendor rather than cobbled together -- 'bloatware' experience.

r0h1n 13y ago

Aren't we forgetting about the closed-source elephant in the room - Google Play Services - the "platform behind the platform"? >> Play Services has system-level powers, but it's updatable. It's part of the Google apps package, so it's not open source. OEMs are not allowed to modify it, making it completely under Google's control. Play Services basically acts as a shim between the normal apps and the installed Android OS. Right now Play Services handles the Google Maps API, Google Account syncing, remote wipe, push messages, the Play Games back end, and many other duties. If you ever question the power of Google Play Services, try disabling it. Nearly every Google App on your device will break. [Source: 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...]

bad_user 13y ago
Google Play Services are not (currently) required for developing and running apps, unless those apps integrate with Google's services, like Google Accounts and Google Maps. Of course nearly every Google App will break if you disable it, since every Google App is proprietary and Google's Play Services is their common framework. The question is - do third-party apps break if you disable Google Play Services? And the answer is that it depends. If the app needs Google's services then it will stop working. However, making Play Services open-source, at least for the functionality provided right now, wouldn't do any good. Because those services rely on Google's server-side infrastructure, so you're still at their mercy. The only thing that bothers me is the Wifi-based location tracking. Google collects info about nearby Wifi networks and so the phone is able to give a pretty good estimate of latitude/longitude coordinates, even without turning the GPS on. Turning Google Play Services off means that Wifi-based location tracking stops working. And this is a pain, given that many apps these days (Facebook, Twitter) want to get your current city and so Facebook for example is accessing my GPS every time I open the app, with no way to turn this functionality off and it's consuming my battery and the GPS status notifier is annoying. In case you're wondering I had to turn Wifi-based location tracking because of a bug in the latest Android 4.3, as it is preventing my Nexus 4 to go to sleep, thus draining my battery.
- 13y ago

throwaway2048 13y ago

Hypothetically, if you made all parts of android rely on "Google Data center services" would moves to close it off be justified? This is what Play Services are moving towards.

guenlo 13y ago

>off of Learn English, and then we'll talk.

eropple 13y ago
"Off of" has been an English construction since the 1500s. It's entirely reasonable and appropriate in this context, much like contractions in informal written English. But I'm fairly sure I'm replying to a throwaway account, so it's not like you were seriously interested.