A world without Android...

[Technarchy]

Technically your right. But Palm was already on life support when web OS came out. That was just a minor blip on the radar. I remember the iPhone and Android G1 was already the go to phones.

Palm was in trouble by then for sure, and the mishandling of the Pre and WebOS launch didn't help one bit. Getting screwed by Verizon was the icing on the cake.

 

[viskon]

Nvm.

 

[apolloa]

The issue wtht that line of thought is the fact that android existed before the iPhone (google backed the project in 2003).

WP8.1 has roots in MS' WinCE platform.

To be fair, because of Apple both Android and WP have changed greatly, but by the same token, so hasn't iOS. We'd not see multitasking if android didn't have it first. Likewise the notification center.


All three platforms have benefited from the increased comeptition

ay, competition is GREAT FOR THE CONSUMER which is YOU! We NEED all the different OS makers and it is very very very foolish to ever wish only one existed, because it would never progress or benefit us and be very expensive.

 

[sentinelsx]

There would be another OS in its place. The glacial drift of progress is inevitable, regardless of what name happens to be upon it.

The most accurate comment in this thread.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

The most accurate comment in this thread.

I always found questions like this to be odd. Like "what if the Model T hadn't been invented" or "what if the Wright Brothers never existed" would mean we'd be living without cars and airplanes.

And what does that question mean, anyway? That the giant Google never forayed into mobile OS? That the monolithic company with its Chromebooks and huge array of cloud apps never thought to try its hand at smartphones? In that scenario, I would imagine Google would be partnered with someone else, because I doubt they'd want to miss out on native access to their services and you know Apple and Microsoft wouldn't allow it. So maybe we'd have Firefox, Amazon, or Ubuntu phones.

Or do we go back further and eliminate Google as an entity entirely? If so, to what extent? Did Google lose the search engine wars back in the late 90s and simply dissolve? If that's the case, we'd probably be enjoying our Yahoo or Lycos phones now.

There are just way too many parts to "no android" that makes the question impossible to answer.

 

[unlinked]

Or do we go back further and eliminate Google as an entity entirely? If so, to what extent? Did Google lose the search engine wars back in the late 90s and simply dissolve? If that's the case, we'd probably be enjoying our Yahoo or Lycos phones now.

It could be an interesting time travel film. Apple fan travels back in time to destroy Google when it was a child (in the 90s). Then he returns to the present to find Apple barely profitable because the iPhone never took off without Youtube or Maps. Now he must race against time to save Apple.*



* not that we have any clue what would have happened