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A Google employee's critique of the Ars Technica Android unforkable article

79 points by patrickaljord 13y ago

forgottenpass 13y ago
While differing in nitty-gritty details, the googler basically confirms what I interpreted to be the main thrust of the Ars article. AOSP is the carrot, the compliance necessary for google's value add software is the stick. The last paragraph concludes saying that Android with google apps is the least bad offering out there. That's why I both use it personally, and why I'm not super pumped about the future of any mobile platform these days.
- outside1234 13y ago
  This. There will continue to be improvements to AOSP, but only as that makes driving Google's proprietary apps easier and faster. Its exactly like Chromium in other words and we see that with Blink.
  - mdwrigh2 13y ago
    > This. There will continue to be improvements to AOSP, but only as that makes driving Google's proprietary apps easier and faster. This isn't remotely true, work continues on the platform in a number of areas beyond just feature requests from other teams. Having application teams able to explain the pain points they feel in the platform and then having the platform team come up with solutions that work for the general use case is a good thing though, it improves everybody's experience. It isn't like there are hidden "makeGmailFaster" APIs that other people can't use.
- Agathos 13y ago
  Yeah, it reads more like an explanation than a rebuttal.
  - hahainternet 13y ago
    No it doesn't, I have no idea how such utter rot makes it onto HN. Peter is a tabloid journalist, he stopped writing interesting balanced articles a long time ago and now just posts linkbait. His points are thoroughly refuted, but I guess you didn't bother to read them.
- csarva 13y ago
  > AOSP is the carrot, the compliance necessary for google's value add software is the stick. "Because cloud!" seems to be the answer to most of the points raised in the original article, which kinda sounds ok on the face of it; but why can't those backend services be abstracted out as well? Why shouldn't I be able to choose some other provider for all these services, like location? It reminds me of a commonly suggested solution to the browser wars in the 90s, when the reasoning for Microsoft's integration of IE directly into the OS was all the new possibilities from such deep integration: why not just allow different browsers/engines (e.g. mozilla) to be swapped in? Well, because then you wouldn't be using MS products anymore! And I think a lot of that is repeating itself here.
  - mdwrigh2 13y ago
    > Why shouldn't I be able to choose some other provider for all these services, like location? You can, just provide an implementation of LocationProvider: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/package-summary.html http://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/pack...
    - fidotron 13y ago
      The problem is Google wrapping those in such a way that sends them the data of the underlying sensors before reporting up the stack to the requesting app. They (rightly) point out this enables different sorts of location stuff, like the network parts, but it doesn't allow you to say to the Google Services I only want you using GPS, and no you can't report back without that whole layer becoming completely unusable, unless the app developer wrote it for the lower level stuff before and manually bypasses it in the case they detect Google's service is disabled.
      - mdwrigh2 13y ago
        Why do you want to skip the sensor fusion step? The entire point is it gives you more accurate data.
        13y ago
stcredzero 13y ago
"Critique."
caniszczyk 13y ago
Is it really the least bad offering? Tizen has potential and is more open: https://www.tizen.org/ https://www.tizen.org/ The problem is no one uses it on a large scale yet...
- hajile 13y ago
  Tizen has it's own large set of problems according to rasterman (EFL guy who works for Samsung). https://www.tizen.org/irclogs/%23tizen.2013-01-20.log.html https://www.tizen.org/irclogs/%23tizen.2013-01-20.log.html In addition to those issues, the SDK is not open-source and is instead a proprietary Samsung license that severely restricts and takes control of a programmers applications (despite the software being supported by the linux foundation). Overall, open webOS or sailfish/mer are much better projects.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  Tizen is in a very precarious position at Samsung. If Samsung saw the slightest advantage (or, conversely, threat) to the billions of dollars they make with Android, Tizen would be gone. There is no handset business at Samsung without Android. Samsung lacks an ecosystem like Amazon has so forking is not practical. Intel, you say? Tell me how many handsets has Intel. Jolla and Firefox OS are better bets.
fidotron 13y ago
I've said it before, but it really strikes me that Ars simply don't understand the universe outside of Wintel at all, and this deconstruction is merely one of many you can do whenever they start commenting about stuff outside of that sphere. You could get away with being a tech commentator like that for a long time, but not anymore.
- protomyth 13y ago
  > but it really strikes me that Ars simply don't understand the universe outside of Wintel at all Doesn't Ars publish the most detailed review of every new Mac OS? I also notice quite a lot of the technical articles I submit to HN from Ars are quite detailed and truthful.
  - Schlaefer 13y ago
    Ars is not one voice. Imho Peter Bright's articles esp. related to OSS and MS should always be read with an "open mind".
  - Oletros 13y ago
    Perhaps he had to write Peter instead of Ars. Siracusa understands very well Apple ecosystem :)
justizin 13y ago
"how would you propose that in-app purchasing not go through GMS? Some general platform API to allow the app to do an in-app purchase with whoever wants to be a “purchase provider?”" Actually, yes. That is how I would propose that an in-app purchasing system not go through GMS.
- blueblob 13y ago
  Although I generally think most of the arguments in this article are bad, I do believe that having all purchases go through google can add value because even though I don't trust them with my data, I still trust them with my purchases.
- fidotron 13y ago
  The problem is one of authenticating the store to prevent someone from writing an app that simply said you've bought stuff when you haven't. As it stands if you've written an Android store you can (and at least Amazon and Verizon have) write your own in app purchase mechanism as well.
- ufmace 13y ago
  That was my first thought too, but there's big problems with that if you think about it for a while. Say they did something like that. Now, I am going to build my own "purchase provider" that just says I paid without ever charging anything. How are you going to stop me from doing that? Somebody would have to authenticate "purchase providers" as actually charging money and paying it to the developer. Either you'd have to manually embed keys for authorized providers in your app, or trust some third-party to authenticate providers. Either way puts you pretty much where you are now. Then there's the matter of developer authentication. Now I build a "purchase provider", but I'm an honest one who wants to actually bill the customer and pay the developer. How do I know who to pay? No developer has signed up in my system yet, so I have to use some kind of universal token to identify the developer of an app that somebody is making purchases from and tell them they have money to claim from me. It would have to be email, since what else would work? And we all have seen how secure email is lately. Anybody who managed to put a different address into the app or somehow intercept email to your address could claim the money. Then we have payment splits. The Google app store has a published payment split between themselves and the developer that you implicitly agree to by publishing there. If you had universal "purchase providers" that anybody could implement, who decides what their payment split is? If I wanted my payment provider to split 90% to me and 10% to you, how do you stop that? If we have a third-party doing provider authentication, what are their standards for what payment splits are acceptable? There's probably even more issues that I haven't thought of yet. If you want to do purchasing like this, you pretty much have to make your own app store and define a proprietary API for it that app developers must explicitly implement.
RyanZAG 13y ago
He's not wrong though - competing with Google on Android is definitely possible. I think the best step would be to create an OSS (GNU?) distribution of Android in the same way we have Linux. While Linux doesn't have all the same proprietary apps and services that Windows does, OSS devs have stepped up and provided some really great alternatives. We need to do the same for Android. The only thing we are really missing is a large OSS project to serve as a base.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  Cyanogen?
  - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
    What I was gong to suggest, with F-Droid as the repository/app store.
- chestnut-tree 13y ago
  "The only thing we are really missing is a large OSS project to serve as a base." What about Firefox OS?
  - mdwrigh2 13y ago
    Which uses an Android kernel, and Gonk is mostly based off of Android userspace code (input, rild, most if not all of the HALs, etc.)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
adrianlmm 13y ago
Peter Bright gives a very good comeback to the statements that the google employee made. With Android 4.4 I felt disappointed that it was just an excuse to integrate more the platform to google services, so, google become the real an unquestionable controller of Android. The "Android is an open platform" is just a fallacy.
- hahainternet 13y ago
  > The "Android is an open platform" is just a fallacy. No it isn't, you're just lying. The response lays out in detail how Android (ie AOSP) is more open than any alternative. Stop talking crap.
  - zwattt 13y ago
    > AOSP ... is more open AOSP is not an Android, stop lying, googleboy.
    - Oletros 13y ago
      Oh, it is ironic that the troll making wrong claims is the one calling others liars. Are you more than 10?
      - zwattt 13y ago
        The typical googleboy's discussion - anyone who criticize google is troll.
    - hahainternet 13y ago
      Yes it is. I'm not a Google employee, although I would be if I could because at least they're doing interesting stuff.
  - threeseed 13y ago
    Being "more open" than the alternatives doesn't make it "open".
alexeisadeski3 13y ago
I don't understand how this is even a discussion. Not only is AOSP completely open and forkable, THERE IS A COMMERCIALLY SUCCESSFUL ANDROID FORK OUT THERE - and it's called Kindle Fire OS. The existence of this conversation, this "controversy," is confusing to me.
guelo 13y ago
The real issue is that the open source world doesn't have an answer to the rise of the cloud. As the integration of the phone and the cloud becomes more central, it becomes impossible for open source to provide a matching experience. The open source movement was born when the pendulum was swinging from the centralized mainframe to the PC revolution. But now as the pendulum is swinging back to centralized computing there will be fewer chances for small individualistic rebels to make an impact.
- betterunix 13y ago
  There are two free software answers to "the cloud:" 1. Open APIs that allow useful, meaningful, and complete interoperability between different services and local software. This is a compromise that allows cloud services to continue to be proprietary while not locking users in to any one particular service or platform. 2. The Affero GPL, which requires service providers to make their source available to their users. Personally I think that (1) is not only a more realistic option, but in the long run a more beneficial option for users.
  - stcredzero 13y ago
    1. Open APIs that allow useful, meaningful, and complete interoperability between different services Also: competition. A lot of people only put up with things Facebook, Google, and Apple get up to because they feel there's no viable alternative that meets their needs. A climate that fosters competition better will encourage upstarts.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > The real issue is that the open source world doesn't have an answer to the rise of the cloud. Nonsense. you're speaking as though open-source and cloud storage are somehow related or in competition. But they're orthogonal -- one can obviously make open-source applications available from the cloud, and you can construct the cloud's infrastructure out of open-source elements. > The open source movement was born when the pendulum was swinging from the centralized mainframe to the PC revolution. That's true, but the two were coincidental and unrelated. Correlation doesn't prove causation. > But now as the pendulum is swinging back to centralized computing there will be fewer chances for small individualistic rebels to make an impact. Wait, what? How does open-source relate to centralized computing? For that matter, how does cloud storage relate to centralized computing? It's not as though cloud storage requires a central repository, any more than the Internet must be a central repository in order to function. Just one example: Linux (a) dominates the Internet's servers and (b) is open-source.
falcolas 13y ago
I'm going to freely admit, this is a biased comment, which probably doesn't belong here, but I think it has to be said. This isn't the first time that Ars Technica, an otherwise reasonable source of information, has published an utter crap article written by Peter Bright. If Ars wants to maintain any shred of credibility (and a technically intelligent readership) in the future, they need to can this author, or label all of his articles as "op-ed", because that's the best that can be said of them. These articles contain no facts, no intelligent reasoning; just a spewing of one man's ill-formed opinions. Ars has already lost my paid subscription (and my ad revenue) due to other crap articles by this author, and I can't imagine them not losing more as a result of this article. Get rid of him, Ars. You'll be better off for it.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  I'd love to think they would be better off, but I assume their analytics are telling them right now that cheap trolling increases ad impressions more than journalistic hard work.
  - falcolas 13y ago
    I would hope that Ars' editorial staff realizes that short term gains at the cost of long term losses is not worth it. Then again, this is hardly the first P.B. story that's caused controversy and caused Ars readership/legitimacy, so I am probably wrong.
    - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
      Sometimes I feel like the whole internet will eventually turn into Gawker clones.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Zigurd 13y ago
ART is in AOSP. Had Google intended to create a two-speed Android, that would have been the place to turn AOSP into a second class citizen. Kindle Fire will run on ART. Heck of a technology to give to an ecosystem competitor.

79 points by patrickaljord 13y ago

While differing in nitty-gritty details, the googler basically confirms what I interpreted to be the main thrust of the Ars article. AOSP is the carrot, the compliance necessary for google's value add software is the stick. The last paragraph concludes saying that Android with google apps is the least bad offering out there. That's why I both use it personally, and why I'm not super pumped about the future of any mobile platform these days.

outside1234 13y ago
This. There will continue to be improvements to AOSP, but only as that makes driving Google's proprietary apps easier and faster. Its exactly like Chromium in other words and we see that with Blink.
- mdwrigh2 13y ago
  > This. There will continue to be improvements to AOSP, but only as that makes driving Google's proprietary apps easier and faster. This isn't remotely true, work continues on the platform in a number of areas beyond just feature requests from other teams. Having application teams able to explain the pain points they feel in the platform and then having the platform team come up with solutions that work for the general use case is a good thing though, it improves everybody's experience. It isn't like there are hidden "makeGmailFaster" APIs that other people can't use.
Agathos 13y ago
Yeah, it reads more like an explanation than a rebuttal.
- hahainternet 13y ago
  No it doesn't, I have no idea how such utter rot makes it onto HN. Peter is a tabloid journalist, he stopped writing interesting balanced articles a long time ago and now just posts linkbait. His points are thoroughly refuted, but I guess you didn't bother to read them.
csarva 13y ago
> AOSP is the carrot, the compliance necessary for google's value add software is the stick. "Because cloud!" seems to be the answer to most of the points raised in the original article, which kinda sounds ok on the face of it; but why can't those backend services be abstracted out as well? Why shouldn't I be able to choose some other provider for all these services, like location? It reminds me of a commonly suggested solution to the browser wars in the 90s, when the reasoning for Microsoft's integration of IE directly into the OS was all the new possibilities from such deep integration: why not just allow different browsers/engines (e.g. mozilla) to be swapped in? Well, because then you wouldn't be using MS products anymore! And I think a lot of that is repeating itself here.
- mdwrigh2 13y ago
  > Why shouldn't I be able to choose some other provider for all these services, like location? You can, just provide an implementation of LocationProvider: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/package-summary.html http://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/pack...
  - fidotron 13y ago
    The problem is Google wrapping those in such a way that sends them the data of the underlying sensors before reporting up the stack to the requesting app. They (rightly) point out this enables different sorts of location stuff, like the network parts, but it doesn't allow you to say to the Google Services I only want you using GPS, and no you can't report back without that whole layer becoming completely unusable, unless the app developer wrote it for the lower level stuff before and manually bypasses it in the case they detect Google's service is disabled.
    - mdwrigh2 13y ago
      Why do you want to skip the sensor fusion step? The entire point is it gives you more accurate data.
      - 13y ago

stcredzero 13y ago

"Critique."

caniszczyk 13y ago

Is it really the least bad offering? Tizen has potential and is more open: https://www.tizen.org/ https://www.tizen.org/ The problem is no one uses it on a large scale yet...

hajile 13y ago
Tizen has it's own large set of problems according to rasterman (EFL guy who works for Samsung). https://www.tizen.org/irclogs/%23tizen.2013-01-20.log.html https://www.tizen.org/irclogs/%23tizen.2013-01-20.log.html In addition to those issues, the SDK is not open-source and is instead a proprietary Samsung license that severely restricts and takes control of a programmers applications (despite the software being supported by the linux foundation). Overall, open webOS or sailfish/mer are much better projects.
Zigurd 13y ago
Tizen is in a very precarious position at Samsung. If Samsung saw the slightest advantage (or, conversely, threat) to the billions of dollars they make with Android, Tizen would be gone. There is no handset business at Samsung without Android. Samsung lacks an ecosystem like Amazon has so forking is not practical. Intel, you say? Tell me how many handsets has Intel. Jolla and Firefox OS are better bets.

fidotron 13y ago

I've said it before, but it really strikes me that Ars simply don't understand the universe outside of Wintel at all, and this deconstruction is merely one of many you can do whenever they start commenting about stuff outside of that sphere. You could get away with being a tech commentator like that for a long time, but not anymore.

protomyth 13y ago
> but it really strikes me that Ars simply don't understand the universe outside of Wintel at all Doesn't Ars publish the most detailed review of every new Mac OS? I also notice quite a lot of the technical articles I submit to HN from Ars are quite detailed and truthful.
- Schlaefer 13y ago
  Ars is not one voice. Imho Peter Bright's articles esp. related to OSS and MS should always be read with an "open mind".
- Oletros 13y ago
  Perhaps he had to write Peter instead of Ars. Siracusa understands very well Apple ecosystem :)

justizin 13y ago

"how would you propose that in-app purchasing not go through GMS? Some general platform API to allow the app to do an in-app purchase with whoever wants to be a “purchase provider?”" Actually, yes. That is how I would propose that an in-app purchasing system not go through GMS.

blueblob 13y ago
Although I generally think most of the arguments in this article are bad, I do believe that having all purchases go through google can add value because even though I don't trust them with my data, I still trust them with my purchases.
fidotron 13y ago
The problem is one of authenticating the store to prevent someone from writing an app that simply said you've bought stuff when you haven't. As it stands if you've written an Android store you can (and at least Amazon and Verizon have) write your own in app purchase mechanism as well.
ufmace 13y ago
That was my first thought too, but there's big problems with that if you think about it for a while. Say they did something like that. Now, I am going to build my own "purchase provider" that just says I paid without ever charging anything. How are you going to stop me from doing that? Somebody would have to authenticate "purchase providers" as actually charging money and paying it to the developer. Either you'd have to manually embed keys for authorized providers in your app, or trust some third-party to authenticate providers. Either way puts you pretty much where you are now. Then there's the matter of developer authentication. Now I build a "purchase provider", but I'm an honest one who wants to actually bill the customer and pay the developer. How do I know who to pay? No developer has signed up in my system yet, so I have to use some kind of universal token to identify the developer of an app that somebody is making purchases from and tell them they have money to claim from me. It would have to be email, since what else would work? And we all have seen how secure email is lately. Anybody who managed to put a different address into the app or somehow intercept email to your address could claim the money. Then we have payment splits. The Google app store has a published payment split between themselves and the developer that you implicitly agree to by publishing there. If you had universal "purchase providers" that anybody could implement, who decides what their payment split is? If I wanted my payment provider to split 90% to me and 10% to you, how do you stop that? If we have a third-party doing provider authentication, what are their standards for what payment splits are acceptable? There's probably even more issues that I haven't thought of yet. If you want to do purchasing like this, you pretty much have to make your own app store and define a proprietary API for it that app developers must explicitly implement.

RyanZAG 13y ago

He's not wrong though - competing with Google on Android is definitely possible. I think the best step would be to create an OSS (GNU?) distribution of Android in the same way we have Linux. While Linux doesn't have all the same proprietary apps and services that Windows does, OSS devs have stepped up and provided some really great alternatives. We need to do the same for Android. The only thing we are really missing is a large OSS project to serve as a base.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
Cyanogen?
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  What I was gong to suggest, with F-Droid as the repository/app store.
chestnut-tree 13y ago
"The only thing we are really missing is a large OSS project to serve as a base." What about Firefox OS?
- mdwrigh2 13y ago
  Which uses an Android kernel, and Gonk is mostly based off of Android userspace code (input, rild, most if not all of the HALs, etc.)
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

adrianlmm 13y ago

Peter Bright gives a very good comeback to the statements that the google employee made. With Android 4.4 I felt disappointed that it was just an excuse to integrate more the platform to google services, so, google become the real an unquestionable controller of Android. The "Android is an open platform" is just a fallacy.

hahainternet 13y ago
> The "Android is an open platform" is just a fallacy. No it isn't, you're just lying. The response lays out in detail how Android (ie AOSP) is more open than any alternative. Stop talking crap.
- zwattt 13y ago
  > AOSP ... is more open AOSP is not an Android, stop lying, googleboy.
  - Oletros 13y ago
    Oh, it is ironic that the troll making wrong claims is the one calling others liars. Are you more than 10?
    - zwattt 13y ago
      The typical googleboy's discussion - anyone who criticize google is troll.
  - hahainternet 13y ago
    Yes it is. I'm not a Google employee, although I would be if I could because at least they're doing interesting stuff.
- threeseed 13y ago
  Being "more open" than the alternatives doesn't make it "open".

alexeisadeski3 13y ago

I don't understand how this is even a discussion. Not only is AOSP completely open and forkable, THERE IS A COMMERCIALLY SUCCESSFUL ANDROID FORK OUT THERE - and it's called Kindle Fire OS. The existence of this conversation, this "controversy," is confusing to me.

guelo 13y ago

The real issue is that the open source world doesn't have an answer to the rise of the cloud. As the integration of the phone and the cloud becomes more central, it becomes impossible for open source to provide a matching experience. The open source movement was born when the pendulum was swinging from the centralized mainframe to the PC revolution. But now as the pendulum is swinging back to centralized computing there will be fewer chances for small individualistic rebels to make an impact.

betterunix 13y ago
There are two free software answers to "the cloud:" 1. Open APIs that allow useful, meaningful, and complete interoperability between different services and local software. This is a compromise that allows cloud services to continue to be proprietary while not locking users in to any one particular service or platform. 2. The Affero GPL, which requires service providers to make their source available to their users. Personally I think that (1) is not only a more realistic option, but in the long run a more beneficial option for users.
- stcredzero 13y ago
  1. Open APIs that allow useful, meaningful, and complete interoperability between different services Also: competition. A lot of people only put up with things Facebook, Google, and Apple get up to because they feel there's no viable alternative that meets their needs. A climate that fosters competition better will encourage upstarts.
lutusp 13y ago
> The real issue is that the open source world doesn't have an answer to the rise of the cloud. Nonsense. you're speaking as though open-source and cloud storage are somehow related or in competition. But they're orthogonal -- one can obviously make open-source applications available from the cloud, and you can construct the cloud's infrastructure out of open-source elements. > The open source movement was born when the pendulum was swinging from the centralized mainframe to the PC revolution. That's true, but the two were coincidental and unrelated. Correlation doesn't prove causation. > But now as the pendulum is swinging back to centralized computing there will be fewer chances for small individualistic rebels to make an impact. Wait, what? How does open-source relate to centralized computing? For that matter, how does cloud storage relate to centralized computing? It's not as though cloud storage requires a central repository, any more than the Internet must be a central repository in order to function. Just one example: Linux (a) dominates the Internet's servers and (b) is open-source.

falcolas 13y ago

I'm going to freely admit, this is a biased comment, which probably doesn't belong here, but I think it has to be said. This isn't the first time that Ars Technica, an otherwise reasonable source of information, has published an utter crap article written by Peter Bright. If Ars wants to maintain any shred of credibility (and a technically intelligent readership) in the future, they need to can this author, or label all of his articles as "op-ed", because that's the best that can be said of them. These articles contain no facts, no intelligent reasoning; just a spewing of one man's ill-formed opinions. Ars has already lost my paid subscription (and my ad revenue) due to other crap articles by this author, and I can't imagine them not losing more as a result of this article. Get rid of him, Ars. You'll be better off for it.

ZeroGravitas 13y ago
I'd love to think they would be better off, but I assume their analytics are telling them right now that cheap trolling increases ad impressions more than journalistic hard work.
- falcolas 13y ago
  I would hope that Ars' editorial staff realizes that short term gains at the cost of long term losses is not worth it. Then again, this is hardly the first P.B. story that's caused controversy and caused Ars readership/legitimacy, so I am probably wrong.
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    Sometimes I feel like the whole internet will eventually turn into Gawker clones.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Zigurd 13y ago

ART is in AOSP. Had Google intended to create a two-speed Android, that would have been the place to turn AOSP into a second class citizen. Kindle Fire will run on ART. Heck of a technology to give to an ecosystem competitor.