11 ms·

The Day Google Had to 'Start Over' on Android

85 points by bluekitten 13y ago

salient 13y ago
Android already existed before Google bought it, and at the time it was built mainly as a competitor to Blackberry (before Google bought them). So Google continued on the same path, as they were less interested in "changing the paradigm of mobile UX" than in killing the Real Fragmentation that existed before, with each OEM having its own OS, and unifying them under the open source Android. There's something to be said about how fast they reacted to iPhone once they saw it, though. I mean how many big companies react as fast the moment they see a disruptive technology and realize its potential for the future? In comparison it took Nokia 4 years after the iPhone, to even admit Symbian was a dead-end, and it also took Microsoft 3 years to come up with something that wasn't just an evolution of Windows Mobile. So kudos to Google for realizing early on the potential of the iPhone-like user interfaces and iPhone-like touchscreen smartphones.
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  A big +1 here. Microsoft and Palm were quoted in articles at the time saying stuff like "you can't just expect to enter the market and be successful immediately" and "we're not worried, we're the dominant player in the market". Google correctly went "well, shit, that's the new standard - let's catch up".
  - kenrikm 13y ago
    Always knew Balmer was a goof - however this one will go down in history. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U The best part is when he goes over the "checklist" of features their phones have.. it'll do email! - quality products are more about checklists of features, something Microsoft still does not get.
    - ceejayoz 13y ago
      Mocking it for the cost was especially silly considering the Motorola RAZR - a pretty but otherwise run-of-the-mill flip phone - launched at a higher price and sold like hotcakes.
    - leoc 13y ago
      I think it's pretty clear that Ballmer is fronting in that clip. The fact that he has a list of anti-iPhone talking points ready to run through doesn't suggest that he's unconcerned about the iPhone, rather the opposite.
- salgernon 13y ago
  It really didn't take long for the Chinese phone modder contingent to clone the iPhone: http://gizmodo.com/377601/crazy-popular-asian-blogstar-prefers-fake-chinese-iphone-to-the-real-thing
- objclxt 13y ago
  > * they were less interested in "changing the paradigm of mobile UX" than in killing the Real Fragmentation that existed before, with each OEM having its own OS, and unifying them under the open source Android.* The article alludes to this, but I think at the time Google wasn't interested in killing "real fragmentation" so much as killing the carrier control that was stopping them from pushing search and ads to mobile. When it came to negotiating with carriers, Apple had a huge advantage. They had a strong hardware brand, and the iPhone was exciting. Google didn't have that. When they went to talk to AT&T, Telefonica, Verizon, Vodafone, etc, to get Google services onto devices those companies were basically holding them to ransom. And quite rightly Google though: "hey, rather than spending all our money getting carriers to promote our services let's spend it making something carriers will want from us".
nakedrobot2 13y ago
This sort of cements the idea that Android really is a copy of iOS in most ways. Of course they've made some of their own innovations, and there are a few things that work better than on iOS. I think Steve Jobs was probably justified in his furious reaction to Android. disclosure: Android user, I dislike many aspects of iOS, namely the restrictive policies of the app store, and the totally broken app sharing UX.
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  I think it's more a "no one can get away with the old shitty UIs anymore". Touch screens and iOS were a better way of doing smart phones, and not adapting was suicide for the companies that chose not to.
- craigyk 13y ago
  I think what made Jobs understandably furious was that the CEO of Google was on Apple's board. Not that he wouldn't have been litigious otherwise, but I think that moved it into vendetta territory.
  - jerf 13y ago
    However, notice that if this article is true, then it also implies that Google was caught completely flat-footed by the iPhone, CEO on the board of Apple or no.
    - runamok 13y ago
      Yeah, I find that part interesting. Given Apple's secrecy would the board even have specific details for a new product?
    - Shooti 13y ago
      That theory never made sense since Schmidt joined the board only 3 months before the official Apple unveiling in January: 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...
shootaray 13y ago
Could this be done if this was a startup going after a phone?
AnotherDesigner 13y ago
As someone that has a lot of Apple products I'm glad they have competition. I don't think any one company should have a monopoly on the modern touchscreen smartphone concept. That being said I wish more Android fans would accept that Google directly copied a lot of ideas from their competition. And that's okay. It would be one thing if Android looked like a direct copy of iOS but it doesn't. It just uses the same technologies. On the other hand, when unscrupulous companies like Samsung try to capitalize on Apples success by directly copying the product they should be slapped down and reminded to do their own thing. It's all about balancing the rights of innovators and the protections for consumers.
- micampe 13y ago
  I think the problem is the word "copied", it always comes with a whiff of "and hence worthless".
- DannyBee 13y ago
  "That being said I wish more Android fans would accept that Google directly copied a lot of ideas from their competition" 1. I wish Apple fans would accept that Apple does the same instead of seemingly believing that every feature Apple has ever added was brought down on chiseled stone tablets received on Mount Sinai :) 2. FWIW: Roughly this exact same story could be written about any good competitor reacting to any good launch by any company ever. It sounds sensational because it's "Google" vs. "Apple" or whatever, but realistically, companies react to each other.
  - gfodor 13y ago
    re: 1, obviously this is true in any element of creative work. there is, of course, a line, where a creative work becomes distinctly new and reasonably un-plagiaristic even though it clearly draws upon the work of others. in other words, pointing out copying by a copier does not make them a hypocrite, since there isn't just one definition of copying, and anyone doing creative work is by definition a copier. Apple defenders would argue that all of the other products they've built have been sufficiently innovative and improvements over their predecessors so as to make them genuinely new things. It's a hard case to make for Android if you consider iOS a predecessor to its design process, which it sounds like was rebooted upon iOS's reveal.
publicfig 13y ago
If you have the chance, it really is worth going back and watching the original iPhone release video. It's pretty amazing to see some of the things that were so new and exciting a few years ago now so much a part of the phone landscape that we can't even imagine a phone without them. It's almost more amazing to see how basic it seems compared to what we have now, just 6 years later. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN4U5FqrOdQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN4U5FqrOdQ
- AlexanderDhoore 13y ago
  I was surprised by the fact that it was an "internet phone". They didn't even talk about apps really. Just a few "widgets", like Google Maps. The native, installed apps were just a by-product.
  - ash 13y ago
    It didn't make sense to talk about apps, because there were no third-party apps at the time.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      Symbian, Psion and PocketPC were what then?!
      - untog 13y ago
        The OP pretty obviously was talking about the iPhone specifically.
        pjmlp 13y ago
        From my understanding, the OP was making the typical statement that before the iPhone there was nothing on the mobile space.
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
bonaldi 13y ago
> Larry Page: “We had a closet full of over 100 phones [that we were developing software for], and we were building our software pretty much one device at a time,” he said in his 2012 report to shareholders. In various remarks over the years he has described the experience as both “awful” and “incredibly painful.” ... and now nearly every Android dev shop I know has closets full of way more than 100 phones, with feature white and blacklists all around.
- alttab 13y ago
  Very true. The difference is in the profit. Google arguably will put up with it considering they are selling more phones. Once goolge starts shipping good hardware, other carriers will follow them for compatibility.
- kumarm 13y ago
  We are an Android Dev Shop with decent success (US Based). We don't carry more than 4 models of android Devices. Would you care to mention names of couple of dev shops that has 100 Android models?
  - girvo 13y ago
    Some big game shops do, IIRC. That was a while back too, when there was 1.6 devices still being used. In my experience, 4 phone devices is about right for Android (and 2-3 iPhones for full testing).
    - NickPollard 13y ago
      For game shops, the reason they might have more is for GPU compatibility - where actual OpenGLES features can very between devices and you do have to worry about different code paths.
  - rsfinn 13y ago
    What do you do when someone reports a bug on a device you don't have, and you can't reproduce it on one of the devices you do have? Genuinely curious (I'm a software developer but not on Android).
bane 13y ago
It's a lesson that head starts, no matter how revolutionary, can always be overcome.
ori_b 13y ago
This is not actually true, although it makes a good myth. Android seems to have been targeting a variety of form factors from pre-iPhone times, and had a touchscreen interface implemented before Apple released the iPhone: http://www.osnews.com/story/25264 http://www.osnews.com/story/25264
- jolan 13y ago
  From the article: > Within weeks the Android team had completely reconfigured its objectives. A phone with a touchscreen, code-named Dream, that had been in the early stages of development, became the focus.
  - ori_b 13y ago
    So, "They prioritized a form factor they'd already been working on"? I'm not sure that I'd describe that as "The Day Google Had to 'Start Over' on Android".
- thoughtsimple 13y ago
  How do you reconcile your view that this is a myth with this: "But for the Google Android team, the iPhone was a kick in the stomach. 'What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties,' DeSalvo said. 'It’s just one of those things that are obvious when you see it.'" Either the Android team already had something like the iPhone but it was so far out that it may as well not have existed or even their work on the touchscreen version was not nearly good enough to ship after the iPhone. I don't think you can read that passage and think that Google was ready with an iPhone like touchscreen design. Even their early touchscreen designs that I saw were still smallish screens with physical keyboards attached.
  - ori_b 13y ago
    I was interning at RIM (now BlackBerry) during the era around the release of the iPhone. RIM also had prototyped iPhone form factors at the time. They were backwards, poorly implemented, and generally turds. You may remember the BlackBerry Storm. You may wish you didn't remember it. Android was clearly in a similar situation. (In fact, they were clearly playing catchup until at least Android 4.0). However, there was something working. The concept was there. A prototype implementation was there. The execution was not.
tomasien 13y ago
Apple annoys me with how closed off they are in many ways, but this is the example I always bring up when people are trying to HATE Apple for being so closed off - they destroyed the most destructive force in mobile UX ever - the phone company oligopoly. Besides also presenting the only ever true competitor to the Microsoft PC, that's their biggest contribution to openness (whether done intentionally or not).
ffrryuu 13y ago
Seems like an admission of guilt over patent infringement. /s
mzs 13y ago
I wondered what Sooner was like, closest I could find: http://blog.steventroughtonsmith.com/2012/05/2007s-pre-m3-version-of-android-google.html http://blog.steventroughtonsmith.com/2012/05/2007s-pre-m3-ve... There is also a video, pretty similar device.
- joezydeco 13y ago
  That is definitely the Sooner. I used one while working at an OHA partner company in 2007. It was just an HTC reflashed with Android.
melling 13y ago
Steve doesn't get enough credit with many HN types. He was also the spark that launched the multi-billion dollar mobile industry. Samsung, Google, etc now all aggressively compete with huge resources. Hopefully, Elon will do the same with the electric car and rockets. If Elon, is successful enough with electric cars, for example, then others will follow, and more resources will be thrown at the problem.
credo 13y ago
Interesting to see how this report has been buried on HN This post is on page 3 and ranked 75. it says "59 points by bluekitten 2 hours ago" Meanwhile on page 1, the number 21 item says "35 points by cromulent 4 hours ago" and the number-29 item says "64 points by AndrewDucker 8 hours ago"
- quarterto 13y ago
  Having more comments than points it will have triggered the controversial filter.
ahomescu1 13y ago
When I first saw the headline, I thought the article would be about throwing Dalvik away and going with AOT compilation (as in the new ART). I've heard a lot of people complain that Android is more laggy/less smooth than iOS, and I always suspected Dalvik is a big part of that.

85 points by bluekitten 13y ago

Android already existed before Google bought it, and at the time it was built mainly as a competitor to Blackberry (before Google bought them). So Google continued on the same path, as they were less interested in "changing the paradigm of mobile UX" than in killing the Real Fragmentation that existed before, with each OEM having its own OS, and unifying them under the open source Android. There's something to be said about how fast they reacted to iPhone once they saw it, though. I mean how many big companies react as fast the moment they see a disruptive technology and realize its potential for the future? In comparison it took Nokia 4 years after the iPhone, to even admit Symbian was a dead-end, and it also took Microsoft 3 years to come up with something that wasn't just an evolution of Windows Mobile. So kudos to Google for realizing early on the potential of the iPhone-like user interfaces and iPhone-like touchscreen smartphones.

ceejayoz 13y ago
A big +1 here. Microsoft and Palm were quoted in articles at the time saying stuff like "you can't just expect to enter the market and be successful immediately" and "we're not worried, we're the dominant player in the market". Google correctly went "well, shit, that's the new standard - let's catch up".
- kenrikm 13y ago
  Always knew Balmer was a goof - however this one will go down in history. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U The best part is when he goes over the "checklist" of features their phones have.. it'll do email! - quality products are more about checklists of features, something Microsoft still does not get.
  - ceejayoz 13y ago
    Mocking it for the cost was especially silly considering the Motorola RAZR - a pretty but otherwise run-of-the-mill flip phone - launched at a higher price and sold like hotcakes.
  - leoc 13y ago
    I think it's pretty clear that Ballmer is fronting in that clip. The fact that he has a list of anti-iPhone talking points ready to run through doesn't suggest that he's unconcerned about the iPhone, rather the opposite.
salgernon 13y ago
It really didn't take long for the Chinese phone modder contingent to clone the iPhone: http://gizmodo.com/377601/crazy-popular-asian-blogstar-prefers-fake-chinese-iphone-to-the-real-thing
objclxt 13y ago
> * they were less interested in "changing the paradigm of mobile UX" than in killing the Real Fragmentation that existed before, with each OEM having its own OS, and unifying them under the open source Android.* The article alludes to this, but I think at the time Google wasn't interested in killing "real fragmentation" so much as killing the carrier control that was stopping them from pushing search and ads to mobile. When it came to negotiating with carriers, Apple had a huge advantage. They had a strong hardware brand, and the iPhone was exciting. Google didn't have that. When they went to talk to AT&T, Telefonica, Verizon, Vodafone, etc, to get Google services onto devices those companies were basically holding them to ransom. And quite rightly Google though: "hey, rather than spending all our money getting carriers to promote our services let's spend it making something carriers will want from us".

nakedrobot2 13y ago

This sort of cements the idea that Android really is a copy of iOS in most ways. Of course they've made some of their own innovations, and there are a few things that work better than on iOS. I think Steve Jobs was probably justified in his furious reaction to Android. disclosure: Android user, I dislike many aspects of iOS, namely the restrictive policies of the app store, and the totally broken app sharing UX.

ceejayoz 13y ago
I think it's more a "no one can get away with the old shitty UIs anymore". Touch screens and iOS were a better way of doing smart phones, and not adapting was suicide for the companies that chose not to.
craigyk 13y ago
I think what made Jobs understandably furious was that the CEO of Google was on Apple's board. Not that he wouldn't have been litigious otherwise, but I think that moved it into vendetta territory.
- jerf 13y ago
  However, notice that if this article is true, then it also implies that Google was caught completely flat-footed by the iPhone, CEO on the board of Apple or no.
  - runamok 13y ago
    Yeah, I find that part interesting. Given Apple's secrecy would the board even have specific details for a new product?
  - Shooti 13y ago
    That theory never made sense since Schmidt joined the board only 3 months before the official Apple unveiling in January: 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...

shootaray 13y ago

Could this be done if this was a startup going after a phone?

AnotherDesigner 13y ago

As someone that has a lot of Apple products I'm glad they have competition. I don't think any one company should have a monopoly on the modern touchscreen smartphone concept. That being said I wish more Android fans would accept that Google directly copied a lot of ideas from their competition. And that's okay. It would be one thing if Android looked like a direct copy of iOS but it doesn't. It just uses the same technologies. On the other hand, when unscrupulous companies like Samsung try to capitalize on Apples success by directly copying the product they should be slapped down and reminded to do their own thing. It's all about balancing the rights of innovators and the protections for consumers.

micampe 13y ago
I think the problem is the word "copied", it always comes with a whiff of "and hence worthless".
DannyBee 13y ago
"That being said I wish more Android fans would accept that Google directly copied a lot of ideas from their competition" 1. I wish Apple fans would accept that Apple does the same instead of seemingly believing that every feature Apple has ever added was brought down on chiseled stone tablets received on Mount Sinai :) 2. FWIW: Roughly this exact same story could be written about any good competitor reacting to any good launch by any company ever. It sounds sensational because it's "Google" vs. "Apple" or whatever, but realistically, companies react to each other.
- gfodor 13y ago
  re: 1, obviously this is true in any element of creative work. there is, of course, a line, where a creative work becomes distinctly new and reasonably un-plagiaristic even though it clearly draws upon the work of others. in other words, pointing out copying by a copier does not make them a hypocrite, since there isn't just one definition of copying, and anyone doing creative work is by definition a copier. Apple defenders would argue that all of the other products they've built have been sufficiently innovative and improvements over their predecessors so as to make them genuinely new things. It's a hard case to make for Android if you consider iOS a predecessor to its design process, which it sounds like was rebooted upon iOS's reveal.

publicfig 13y ago

If you have the chance, it really is worth going back and watching the original iPhone release video. It's pretty amazing to see some of the things that were so new and exciting a few years ago now so much a part of the phone landscape that we can't even imagine a phone without them. It's almost more amazing to see how basic it seems compared to what we have now, just 6 years later. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN4U5FqrOdQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN4U5FqrOdQ

AlexanderDhoore 13y ago
I was surprised by the fact that it was an "internet phone". They didn't even talk about apps really. Just a few "widgets", like Google Maps. The native, installed apps were just a by-product.
- ash 13y ago
  It didn't make sense to talk about apps, because there were no third-party apps at the time.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    Symbian, Psion and PocketPC were what then?!
    - untog 13y ago
      The OP pretty obviously was talking about the iPhone specifically.
      - pjmlp 13y ago
        From my understanding, the OP was making the typical statement that before the iPhone there was nothing on the mobile space.
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]

bonaldi 13y ago

> Larry Page: “We had a closet full of over 100 phones [that we were developing software for], and we were building our software pretty much one device at a time,” he said in his 2012 report to shareholders. In various remarks over the years he has described the experience as both “awful” and “incredibly painful.” ... and now nearly every Android dev shop I know has closets full of way more than 100 phones, with feature white and blacklists all around.

alttab 13y ago
Very true. The difference is in the profit. Google arguably will put up with it considering they are selling more phones. Once goolge starts shipping good hardware, other carriers will follow them for compatibility.
kumarm 13y ago
We are an Android Dev Shop with decent success (US Based). We don't carry more than 4 models of android Devices. Would you care to mention names of couple of dev shops that has 100 Android models?
- girvo 13y ago
  Some big game shops do, IIRC. That was a while back too, when there was 1.6 devices still being used. In my experience, 4 phone devices is about right for Android (and 2-3 iPhones for full testing).
  - NickPollard 13y ago
    For game shops, the reason they might have more is for GPU compatibility - where actual OpenGLES features can very between devices and you do have to worry about different code paths.
- rsfinn 13y ago
  What do you do when someone reports a bug on a device you don't have, and you can't reproduce it on one of the devices you do have? Genuinely curious (I'm a software developer but not on Android).

bane 13y ago

It's a lesson that head starts, no matter how revolutionary, can always be overcome.

ori_b 13y ago

This is not actually true, although it makes a good myth. Android seems to have been targeting a variety of form factors from pre-iPhone times, and had a touchscreen interface implemented before Apple released the iPhone: http://www.osnews.com/story/25264 http://www.osnews.com/story/25264

jolan 13y ago
From the article: > Within weeks the Android team had completely reconfigured its objectives. A phone with a touchscreen, code-named Dream, that had been in the early stages of development, became the focus.
- ori_b 13y ago
  So, "They prioritized a form factor they'd already been working on"? I'm not sure that I'd describe that as "The Day Google Had to 'Start Over' on Android".
thoughtsimple 13y ago
How do you reconcile your view that this is a myth with this: "But for the Google Android team, the iPhone was a kick in the stomach. 'What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties,' DeSalvo said. 'It’s just one of those things that are obvious when you see it.'" Either the Android team already had something like the iPhone but it was so far out that it may as well not have existed or even their work on the touchscreen version was not nearly good enough to ship after the iPhone. I don't think you can read that passage and think that Google was ready with an iPhone like touchscreen design. Even their early touchscreen designs that I saw were still smallish screens with physical keyboards attached.
- ori_b 13y ago
  I was interning at RIM (now BlackBerry) during the era around the release of the iPhone. RIM also had prototyped iPhone form factors at the time. They were backwards, poorly implemented, and generally turds. You may remember the BlackBerry Storm. You may wish you didn't remember it. Android was clearly in a similar situation. (In fact, they were clearly playing catchup until at least Android 4.0). However, there was something working. The concept was there. A prototype implementation was there. The execution was not.

tomasien 13y ago

Apple annoys me with how closed off they are in many ways, but this is the example I always bring up when people are trying to HATE Apple for being so closed off - they destroyed the most destructive force in mobile UX ever - the phone company oligopoly. Besides also presenting the only ever true competitor to the Microsoft PC, that's their biggest contribution to openness (whether done intentionally or not).

ffrryuu 13y ago

Seems like an admission of guilt over patent infringement. /s

mzs 13y ago

I wondered what Sooner was like, closest I could find: http://blog.steventroughtonsmith.com/2012/05/2007s-pre-m3-version-of-android-google.html http://blog.steventroughtonsmith.com/2012/05/2007s-pre-m3-ve... There is also a video, pretty similar device.

joezydeco 13y ago
That is definitely the Sooner. I used one while working at an OHA partner company in 2007. It was just an HTC reflashed with Android.

melling 13y ago

Steve doesn't get enough credit with many HN types. He was also the spark that launched the multi-billion dollar mobile industry. Samsung, Google, etc now all aggressively compete with huge resources. Hopefully, Elon will do the same with the electric car and rockets. If Elon, is successful enough with electric cars, for example, then others will follow, and more resources will be thrown at the problem.

credo 13y ago

Interesting to see how this report has been buried on HN This post is on page 3 and ranked 75. it says "59 points by bluekitten 2 hours ago" Meanwhile on page 1, the number 21 item says "35 points by cromulent 4 hours ago" and the number-29 item says "64 points by AndrewDucker 8 hours ago"

quarterto 13y ago
Having more comments than points it will have triggered the controversial filter.

ahomescu1 13y ago

When I first saw the headline, I thought the article would be about throwing Dalvik away and going with AOT compilation (as in the new ART). I've heard a lot of people complain that Android is more laggy/less smooth than iOS, and I always suspected Dalvik is a big part of that.