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I think, at this point, a big part of it is just maintaining control of the platform. It seems like a selfish goal, but if they didn't, then some other company
by ufmace 12y ago
I think, at this point, a big part of it is just maintaining control of the platform. It seems like a selfish goal, but if they didn't, then some other company just might take it over by forking it, making their own proprietary version, and making that version more popular. It arguably came close to happening already with Samsung's market dominance, and Amazon's non-google Kindle Android. With so much money wrapped up in it, somebody is going to be in control of it. Would you rather it be Google, Amazon, Samsung, Microsoft? For all of their faults, at least Google is still maintaining a usable open-source OS.
- scholia 12y agoThe problem with Google controlling it is that it already has a monopoly market share of web advertising and web search, and much the biggest web-based tracking system. Add email, maps, cloud-hosting and other services and it has unprecedented power. As well as a monopoly market share of smartphones, it's now expanding into other areas such as cars, TVs (again), robots, internet delivery and so on. Monopoly market shares are fairly common in technology, but it becomes dangerous when any single company gets to control too many of them....