Where have you seen this? I find it very hard to believe since he was both the CEO of Google and on the board at Apple until after Android's launch.
Google's own CEO didn't participate on the Android project until after it's release?
That's a very different kind of agreement from what Apple has with Google. I said "partners" not patent licensees.
Apple just licenses the ActiveSync protocol - like Microsoft's arch-rival Google also does - they don't actually use any of Microsoft's services.
Microsoft had no option but license that, as their antitrust settlement with the DOJ and European commission forced them to open up their protocols to rival companies.
Apple only held Bing over Google's head only with the iOS 4, released in June 2010. This was already after Schmidt had left and well into the smartphone "war".
Even then it wasn't a serious threat, as the default search engine was still well set to Google under a few good layers of menus.
Licensing technology developed and being developed by Microsoft is in every way equivalent to using the services of Microsoft. Microsoft is doing something for them. They are paying Microsoft for what they are doing. In what way is that NOT the same as Microsoft servicing Apple? :- )
Granted, my view is tainted by the so called Service-Dominant Logic. But still, this case i find quite straight-forward in the end.
Are you claiming in a) that Android spies on its users? How do they make money out of "personalised information"? Do they sell it?
Surely just making sure Google's services - like search and e-mail - are the best out there would be enough. It seems to have worked front the start (they beat Altavista and then Hotmail) - and they didn't need access to people's computers.
Im not making any claims to the extent in which data capturing takes place. Im sure it goes beyond what is publicly known, and what Google wants you to know. That said, they're probably on the right side of the law. With the growing attention to their business practices, they better be.
Second, do they sell it? It being information about you, the user. Of course. That is pretty much their entire business model. Facebook does the same. And the latter is the prime case in point for showing just how valuable personalized information is.
(Come to think of it, personalized information sounds like a ****** term on my behalf, but i suppose you get the point regardless).
Third, no. Just having the best product/service is not enough. And, all data are not born equally. The better you can profile someone, the more money you can make selling that data (once again, case in point: Facebook). Phones being devices with a) a pretty high rate of personalization, and b) being with you pretty much always, make them prime for such data gathering.
Last, to understand Google one must also understand its growth options. Google dominates search. Further, there is only so much we can search for. With few new users to win, and little ways of getting us to "search more", their way to grow is by getting us to use more of their services (so that they can get even more data, and sell even more ads). So yeah... guess i can cut it short here.
Cheers.
We're going in circles.
As you correctly say, the only way Google has any control over Android is when someone chooses to use their services. For that manufacturers must license the closed-source apps from Google, which are not part of Android itself.
So even if a mobile maker drops Google's services for something else they can still use Android, as AT&T did when they replaced Google with Yahoo:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/03/03/att-android-phone-to-use-yahoo-not-google/
As Motorola does/did in China replacing Google with Bing:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/11/microsoft_bing_on_android_in_china/
And as Amazon does now. (I'm sure you don't need a reference for this one)
So if they can't even use Android to force manufacturers to include Google's revenue-generating services, what's the point of all the investment?
Anyway this has already gone too far off-topic. It's just my top pet Android question, that grows bigger with Google's increasingly bolder moves into mobile.
They can't force anyone, yet 99% of all (relevant) Android devices opt to include Googles revenue-generating services by free will. That said, why do Google need to force anyone again?
People in the alliance are likely to remain faithful to the alliance. If Google decides to pull out, what are they gonna do? Take over those billions in development costs themselves? How would they organize that? etc.
In short: Phone manufacturers are (somewhat) dependent on Android. Android is (somewhat) dependent on support of Google. Googles support of Android is (highly) dependent on that phone manufacturers license their services (help them get data). Ergo: Phone manufacturers are in a sense dependent on licensing Googles services. Thus, no force needed :- )
