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With Android, for some, it's damned if Google does and damned if they don't! Kind of amusing to watch lately - bloggers, writers, whoever - going out and writin

With Android, for some, it's damned if Google does and damned if they don't! Kind of amusing to watch lately - bloggers, writers, whoever - going out and writing inflammatory stuff that is bound to get page views and comments. Hangouts - people were pissed that there wasn't a integrated, one stop messaging solution on Android in 2013. Google tries to do something like that - integrating Google Talk and SMS and now suddenly it's a move to take all your bases. There was lot of cry about the F word. Google does the only thing they could - put reasonable amount of control while keeping their business interests in mind - to reduce fragmentation and offer a more uniform experience. Now people are crying too much control. If on the other hand they would have said here's Android, and here are freely downloadable GApps that you can freely use to avail Google services, you can do whatever you want with them - I am sure there would be an article somewhere claiming the F word, "dumping", lack of uniform experience and few other things vaguely implying malaise. You also notice that this drivel is coming mostly from two sources - sites benefiting from page views and user interaction via comments and people who kind of feel threatened by Android's success - techies on the other mobile platform for example. Problem is none of these articles provide any practical solutions for Google to implement - I guess doing that would be too inconvenient for a future article they might need to write claiming what Google was doing then was bad! If one of these articles articulated the path Google should take to keep Android successful, have no fragmentation, have singular, uniform experience without violating any of their future whiney articles ( [2015]How Google screwed up - Android went from 78.1% market share to 1.5% by following what we said in 2014) - it would be worthwhile paying attention. But of course that is impossible to do - you can only have your cake OR you can eat it! Why solve that when you can just keep writing nonsense drivel and 'engage' you audience.

doctorpangloss 13y ago
>Problem is none of these articles provide any practical solutions for Google to implement Practically speaking, it would be pretty easy for Google to make many of its already standalone updated apps fully standalone. Anyone could distribute the Gmail package, Google just won't let them. It's very useful that Google Play is integrated in a way that reduces the friction of payments and protects the users and developers from various kinds of fraud. I don't know how to allow multiple stores to be installed where a high-stakes third party developer doesn't get ruined by fraud when they reach a sufficient scale.
- blinkingled 13y ago
  > Practically speaking, it would be pretty easy for Google to make many of its already standalone updated apps fully standalone. Anyone could distribute the Gmail package, Google just won't let them. CM and ton of other ROMs are distributing GApps as standalone Zip - Google isn't doing anything to stop them. Tomorrow if Huawei does that - it would be a different story. Then Huawei can ship with 2.3 and outdated/incomplete Gapps (no browser, just gmail, no Google location APIs, instead incompatible APIs, and do a bunch of other things that could be bad for everyone else - which brings me to the point I made - that will result in people then complaining - In China you don't get uniform Google experience - Huawei phones ship with HuaweiKit instead of Blink, HuaweiBrowser instead of Chrome - so site owners can't even create a web app that works on all "Android" devices etc.
throwaway2048 13y ago
you are operating under the assumption that Gapps stuff must be closed source, OEMs could still easily be bound by these agreements, and the stuff be open source. stop the appologetics.
- blinkingled 13y ago
  > you are operating under the assumption that Gapps stuff must be closed source, OEMs could still easily be bound by these agreements, and the stuff be open source. In other words you don't know what you are talking about. (Hint: Try working through all the consequences of it.)
  - throwaway2048 13y ago
    what consequences would those be? Google Apps stuff is largely reliant on access to Google APIs. You still need permission from Google to use them.
    - blinkingled 13y ago
      So then a competitor can get the Open Source GDrive app, modify it in whatever way they want and prevent Google from making any server side improvements because the OEM's version will become incompatible? Or worst case, the OEM might build their own compatible cloud with their own OEMDrive server that implements their own APIs and fully cuts out Google? Remember Google isn't a charity - they are a business and they have to protect their business interests. Once you start under the incomplete premise of Google with their Open stuff and without their business interests - that's when you start demanding 100% open. IMHO they are as of today doing a fair job balancing both their interests and AOSP's openness. Conflate AOSP and GApps and that's when you get into silly land.

doctorpangloss 13y ago

>Problem is none of these articles provide any practical solutions for Google to implement Practically speaking, it would be pretty easy for Google to make many of its already standalone updated apps fully standalone. Anyone could distribute the Gmail package, Google just won't let them. It's very useful that Google Play is integrated in a way that reduces the friction of payments and protects the users and developers from various kinds of fraud. I don't know how to allow multiple stores to be installed where a high-stakes third party developer doesn't get ruined by fraud when they reach a sufficient scale.

blinkingled 13y ago
> Practically speaking, it would be pretty easy for Google to make many of its already standalone updated apps fully standalone. Anyone could distribute the Gmail package, Google just won't let them. CM and ton of other ROMs are distributing GApps as standalone Zip - Google isn't doing anything to stop them. Tomorrow if Huawei does that - it would be a different story. Then Huawei can ship with 2.3 and outdated/incomplete Gapps (no browser, just gmail, no Google location APIs, instead incompatible APIs, and do a bunch of other things that could be bad for everyone else - which brings me to the point I made - that will result in people then complaining - In China you don't get uniform Google experience - Huawei phones ship with HuaweiKit instead of Blink, HuaweiBrowser instead of Chrome - so site owners can't even create a web app that works on all "Android" devices etc.

throwaway2048 13y ago

you are operating under the assumption that Gapps stuff must be closed source, OEMs could still easily be bound by these agreements, and the stuff be open source. stop the appologetics.

blinkingled 13y ago
> you are operating under the assumption that Gapps stuff must be closed source, OEMs could still easily be bound by these agreements, and the stuff be open source. In other words you don't know what you are talking about. (Hint: Try working through all the consequences of it.)
- throwaway2048 13y ago
  what consequences would those be? Google Apps stuff is largely reliant on access to Google APIs. You still need permission from Google to use them.
  - blinkingled 13y ago
    So then a competitor can get the Open Source GDrive app, modify it in whatever way they want and prevent Google from making any server side improvements because the OEM's version will become incompatible? Or worst case, the OEM might build their own compatible cloud with their own OEMDrive server that implements their own APIs and fully cuts out Google? Remember Google isn't a charity - they are a business and they have to protect their business interests. Once you start under the incomplete premise of Google with their Open stuff and without their business interests - that's when you start demanding 100% open. IMHO they are as of today doing a fair job balancing both their interests and AOSP's openness. Conflate AOSP and GApps and that's when you get into silly land.