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Google Press Conference Today: Mobile "Android" Platform

~J~ said:
No.... people customize their house by how the paint it, the brick or siding they choose, how they decorate it and landscape the yard. People customize their cars with paint jobs, wheels, tires, racing parts... all kinds of stuff.

Didnt think I needed to spell it out for you... I'll keep that in mind for next time I post.
Click to expand...

Heh. Well, at least I got one good laugh today. Thanks!

Okay, I learned my lesson -- I'll stop using sarcasm and multi-syllable words and spell it out for you. Yes, people customize their houses and cars, but most of that customization concerns aesthetics only! A large degree of functional familiarity is maintained no matter how much customization, such that I can walk into my neighbor's house and find the silverware drawer without searching the bathroom, and I can find the car stereo without searching the trunk. A roll-your-own UI eliminates familiarity, one of the most important aspects of ease-of-use.

On a completely different subject, I never knew my eyes could roll that far back.
 
Wow!

Google, huge though it is, is continuing to be a force for Good.

Here's the pattern Google is following, in the case of OpenSocial and now Android:

1. Big product with major consumer cred launches in June of this year and gains significant buzz and impressive growth.

In one case, iPhone. In the other case, the facebook platform

2. Big product, perhaps understandably, keeps certain things proprietary and closed

Apple releases the infamous 1.1.1 update, wiping out third party applications and locking down the iPhone software.
(perhaps understandably because you really don't want malware infecting your phone)

Facebook's platform has its own proprietary markup language and API
(perhaps understandably because it helps apps easily match the site's look-and-feel)

3. Google quietly works on a way to open things up some more. Allows ridiculous amounts of buzz to build up

Gphone, "Maka Maka"

4. Google quietly gathers a large list of industry partners that have been left behind by the trailblazer, and convinces them that uniting behind an open standard will be great for them.

Today's list of phone companies, last week's list of social networks.

5. Google makes a big announcement. Not a new product, but a new standard and some new software.

Android, OpenSocial
 
Its a bit like Symbian where the manufacturers take the Symbian OS and sling on GUI of their choice - UIQ ( Quartz ) or Series60. I'm hoping the UI will be consistent through all phones based on the Google OS.

An open o/s combined with google - already with manufacturers on board are going to make Symbian, Palm, Blackberry and the other minor players take notice.

Having Java would be great - its a very mainstream language and will encourage developers to the platform. I find ObjectiveC a little odd in its syntax.
 
I'm surprised that Google's stock didn't tank after this announcement. A new open source software platform for phones? That's it, that's the big news? This is no iPhone killer. I think people were more thinking along the lines of some revolutionary VoIP phone, with Google announcing they were going to construct a network of radio towers and supply the world with cheap WiFi access for their Gphones or something.
 
i'm glad google has dropped this bomb. i cant wait for one of these pretty "iPhone-killers" to actually have software to make them usable.

as for people complaining that companies will still fail because they will be designing interfaces, i think you're wrong. there are plenty of very capable programmers in the open source community that would love to see a legitimate iphone-killer.

i'd personally like to see the iphone opened at least as much real-OSX is. you know google treats all operating systems very fairly, so i see android offering very good cross platform support with syncing and calendars of many flavors.

even if this is not the iphone killing gPhone, it is the first step in a battle of two very good software makers and that is only good for the enduser.
 
splashman said:
Heh. Well, at least I got one good laugh today. Thanks!

Okay, I learned my lesson -- I'll stop using sarcasm and multi-syllable words and spell it out for you. Yes, people customize their houses and cars, but most of that customization concerns aesthetics only! A large degree of functional familiarity is maintained no matter how much customization, such that I can walk into my neighbor's house and find the silverware drawer without searching the bathroom, and I can find the car stereo without searching the trunk. A roll-your-own UI eliminates familiarity, one of the most important aspects of ease-of-use.

On a completely different subject, I never knew my eyes could roll that far back.
Click to expand...

Seems to me that we are arguing the same point, just from different angles. With my house analogy, you still know where the front door is, the silverware drawer, etc... yes... on the phone, you still know how to make a call, end a call, send a txt, etc... same thing. the basics are the same, people just want to make it LOOK different. thats all. and thats not limited to forums and enthusiasts. People will always want more - thats what drives the market. Steve wanted a better way to input information into a phone... and thus multi-touch was born. you still hit a "send" button to make a call and a "end" button to end a call... they just look different.
 
Its early to tell, but I dont see this as effecting Apple in any way. However, I do see this hurting everyone else. Here's why...

1. Apple's phone is attractive hardware. The software isn't necessarily the biggest draw (although its very significant)

2. This is not a gPhone! So far we dont know what hardware this ia running on. The iphone may get heat when the gPhone is announced, which leads me to #3...

3. By the time this is even released (end of 2008), imagine where the iphone will be! Third party apps will be available, obviously 3G with all the other stuff, with potentially major software improvements, and it will be cheap!!! This platform will just be starting off!

Conclusion: Every Linux freak will use it, not many others will.
 
Everyone is forgetting one thing

Everyone is forgetting one thing. This software that Google announced. It is NOT for end users. This software is for companies who want to build a phone. It is Open Source and can be changed but what we do NOT know is how it will be loaded into the phone. Maybe the phone will not even be programmable and the firmware will be permanently burned into the phone. Maybe all the executable programs will need to be signed. Or maybe the storage is encrypted? Linux allows all those possabilities. Technically they will have to make the source code available so you can read it andlearn how your phone works but the phone may not have any storage in it. Hack, one could use Linux to build a simple 12 button phone

The iPhone has BSD UNIX inside. Googles has Linux. Linux and BSD are so much alike that no many people can tell one from the other, You have to be a bit of an expert..
 
I think it will take quite a while to make its mark, maybe 5 years or more. But I believe this is a great move by google.
It will kill MSFT OS's dead by eventually taking 70% of the market. It will no doubt be ported to the desktop/laptop (or the desktop/laptop market will cease to exist as we know it, morphed into phone tech).

The writing was on the wall 10 years ago for microsoft. IMO, in the future all operating sytems will be unix based, and this is MSFT's last stand.

MSFT do however have one last chance to remain dominant....write a Unix based OS themselves! But redmond are too thick to realize, and will cling on to their proprietary OS till the bitter end, OR until it is too late.

By my rekoning they have about two years to develop something to combat this onslaught, my bet is they dont have the balls to make such a radical change in business plan. = doom hahahahahahaaa

Oh and Apple? like someone has already posted, they will continue to take the high end 30% of the market, though I do think they may achive higher than this before the google train arrives.
Apple can survive through providing order within chaos. Applications will be much easier to port over from this new GOOG OS than with MSFT, and inter OS comunication will be relatively painless due to the more standards complient nature of the two operating systems that will inherit the earth.
 
Mykbibby said:
Conclusion: Every Linux freak will use it, not many others will.
Click to expand...

We have barely any details. I doubt whether the phone manufacturers / carriers who will use this OS will throw on a user hostile UI. I doubt Google will throw together a horrid UI either ( if they do that part ).

Its a bit like finding out OSX will be based on Open BSD and drawing similar conclusions.

The iPhone will have an artificial glass ceiling - why? Because its user base will be limited by the carriers who win the rights to carry the iPhone - at the moment that is exclusive to one carrier per country. Together with, the iPhone like any other phone isn't for everyone. Personally, due to the way its sold - 30% is far too high - instead, more like 10%.
 
inkswamp said:
* Google has no expertise in writing operating systems.

* Google has no expertise in marrying said operating systems to hardware (a whole other discipline almost separate from writing operating systems.)
Click to expand...

I'm not a Google fan by any means (I think their stances on privacy and data retention are invasive and deplorable, and I hate advertising businesses on principle) but I know the above statements are 100% wrong.

Google's expertise with operating systems and hardware integration is second-to-none. It has to be so to run the largest datacenters in the non-classified world. Google doen't buy its hardware off the rack - it has the racks custom made. Google is all about providing simple but powerful interfaces to enormously complex infrastructure (which itself can be managed with very few people).

That said, history is littered with the corpses of all-star teams and initiatives. Remember Taligent?
 
~J~ said:
Seems to me that we are arguing the same point, just from different angles. With my house analogy, you still know where the front door is, the silverware drawer, etc... yes... on the phone, you still know how to make a call, end a call, send a txt, etc... same thing. the basics are the same, people just want to make it LOOK different.
Click to expand...

Huh? Are you saying that the situation today is that everyone knows how to make a call on every brand of phone? Or are you saying that with Google's roll-your-own UI, everyone will know how to make a call? Either way, pardon my incredulity, but WTF?

Also, you make the same mistake as most companies these days -- believing that "functionality" exists in its own little world, apart from "design" or "how it looks." Computer companies slap together an all-in-one and proclaim the death of the iMac. Phone companies slap together a touch-screen model and proclaim the death of the iPhone. Puhlease. Apple is successful because they understand that the user experience is dependent on a highly complex amalgamation of functionality, interaction design, and aesthetics. Neither I nor Apple would claim their products are anywhere close to ideal, but at this point in history they get closer than any other company, because they understand the depth of the challenge.
 
The event was surprisingly short on details and hence really bland. I was hoping to see some screenshots...but wait, there's no UI...every manufacturer can create their own. So much for consistency.

If the OHA is all about the software innards (i.e. purely a framework or SDK), then it's really too soon to get excited. Every SDK offers the potential to create good end-user products, but it's up to each developer to do so. Some will do a better job than others. For example, the Mac OS SDKs are available to all developers, but some create much better apps than others. So a danger here might be the possibility to see really good implementations and some really crappy ones.

I particularly like this quote from Engadget:

The Symbian folks stated the obvious: "If Google was not involved the industry would have just yawned and rolled over," said John Forsyth of Symbian. "We take it seriously but we are the ones with real phones, real phone platforms and a wealth of volume built up over years."
Click to expand...
 
Well, most notably absent was Nokia, the biggest of them all.

Nokia has already an open platform of its own, Maemo. At the moment, it's only for Nokia's Internet Tablets (N700, N770, N800, N810) - but it shouldn't be too difficult to start using it also in mobile phones.

However, Nokia has been using Symbian and S60 platform in their phones for ages. Thus, I wouldn't expect a sudden change in that. Nokia is the biggest manufacturer - and S60 (& Symbian) is the most popular smart phone platform with a wide margin. They have absolutely nothing to worry about.

Apple's problem is that it has (at the moment) only one way to go: the closed iPhone OS X. Nokia, however, has several options: the closed platforms (S40 and S60&Symbian) and the open one (Maemo). They have lots of financial and R&D potential to react changes in mobile phone markets. Apple doesn't.

(E.g., not a long time ago, Nokia purchased Navteq with cash (billions of US dollars).)
 
It's been touched on already in this thread, but it seems like the enthusiasm for a true open platform mobile phone has everyone overlooking the fact that it's still up to the manufacturer to provide the final presentation to you. The operating system is a very big deal, but it's up to the carriers and the manufacturers to make this a big success, not Google. People compare this to the iPhone announcement and until Google does create their own phone, it's purely Apples and Oranges. I've heard Google and HTC has partnered up for a phone that should be up for preview early 08. I would be very interested in seeing what they have come up with.

Personally, I'm in between a power user who looks for customization and a pure consumer that doesn't want to be bothered debugging programs. I have no complaints about my iPhone and I'm not that wild about the apps that Google has created so far. Not enough to want to use them on my mobile phone, that's for sure. But I believe what we're seeing is the beginning of hopefully a new vision for mobile handsets around the world. Google has the capital and the minds to create the greatest mobile OS known to man. What we see now, could be the foundation of something much greater than we can really see. But as far as immediate impact though, i'm not impressed.
 
splashman said:
Huh? Are you saying that the situation today is that everyone knows how to make a call on every brand of phone? Or are you saying that with Google's roll-your-own UI, everyone will know how to make a call? Either way, pardon my incredulity, but WTF?

Also, you make the same mistake as most companies these days -- believing that "functionality" exists in its own little world, apart from "design" or "how it looks." Computer companies slap together an all-in-one and proclaim the death of the iMac. Phone companies slap together a touch-screen model and proclaim the death of the iPhone. Puhlease. Apple is successful because they understand that the user experience is dependent on a highly complex amalgamation of functionality, interaction design, and aesthetics. Neither I nor Apple would claim their products are anywhere close to ideal, but at this point in history they get closer than any other company, because they understand the depth of the challenge.
Click to expand...

No, Im saying people are willing to learn *small* differences in operations & menus. My original point is that they want customization... plain and simple. for most people, that means they want to change the way it looks, or change a ringtone... for more advanced users, it could mean completely changing the way the GUI functions... thats the point of customization. NOW, I think Apple did good for the most part with the iPhone.. but lets face it, we all had to learn a new way to get around a phone when we got it - but we were willing to, because it was a *better* way. And now that people know how to get around in the iPhone... they want to make it look different. there is good money to be made by a company that allows customization of its products. Apple could collect a royalty fee for every program sold on the iPhone... things like that. But that was my point.
 
What I find ultimately interesting about these kind of discussions are the assumptions people make. Just because google announced this, this must be an affront to iPhone or a challenge to Apple.

Set aside the obvious cultural impact of iPhone we are only talking about the North American and European markets currently.

Last time I checked, Asia has a HUGE (and I would estimate that with China & India as part of it) what would amount to the biggest mobile market in the world.

Also until another player in the eMail system market comes out and challenges Microsoft for marketplace share of Exchange server - most large companies will not be able to adopt iPhone until it has true integration capabilities with Exchange server (like BlackBerry and Windows Mobile).

Again, if this is just about the consumer market in the U.S. (and certain European countries) then sure have fun with it. But I would wager that Google may have plans for a solution for Exchange integration that iPhone may or may not have. Why do you think BlackBerries are so popular - they just work with Corporate eMail systems based on Exchange.

Further, Apple should be estatic about this announcement - think about how much FREE publicity they are getting out of this.
 
splashman said:
Huh? Are you saying that the situation today is that everyone knows how to make a call on every brand of phone? Or are you saying that with Google's roll-your-own UI, everyone will know how to make a call? Either way, pardon my incredulity, but WTF?
Click to expand...

I'm not being sarcastic when I say the only phone I can think of that I might initially have trouble picking up and dialing on is the iPhone. I don't have an iPhone, but is the dialing interface not a couple screens deep (counting the unlock)? Any other phone I can think of has number keys and a send key on the face of the phone. I've used a number of phones with craptastic interfaces, but among them I've never had trouble seeing the number pad and send button.

Every new phone I've gotten had a different interface that took time getting used to. Why does the Android platform have to be exactly the same on every phone? Simply because you think it should? If I spend the majority of my time texting or listening to music should I not be able to set up my interface in a way that more easily facilitates those specific things? Why should all interfaces be consistent? As long as I know my way around and it pleases me what does it matter to you as someone who doesn't use my phone?

On to the actual topic: I really think this will end up being locked down in the same way phones are now. Want a weather program? $7.99. Stock ticker? $4.99. I hope I'm wrong in thinking Android will only make it easier to program for many different devices at the same time while maintaing the traditional non-openness. I really want an open platform phone, but knowing the US cellular providers, it probably won't happen here. :(

As for Google making money from this, wouldn't it be as simple as having the default search tool in their mobile browser be Google based? I would imagine the ad revenue from that alone would justify the expense of putting together this OS. Millions of phones searching Google. Many of those phones with GPS functionality allowing Google to sell local targeted ads.
 
vga4life said:
Google's expertise with operating systems and hardware integration is second-to-none. It has to be so to run the largest datacenters in the non-classified world.
Click to expand...

You don't write your own operating system to do what Google does, even to run a large-scale data center. I'll give them high marks for writing software, but they don't write their own operating system, at least based on what I've read about them. That has a lot to do with the hardware and, barring one example, I can't think of anything Google has done in terms of hardware. If you know that's not the case, please let me know. I'm interested. I'm not sure I understand the point of Google writing their own operating system to run their data center. Do they really do that? If so, why?
 
First of all this is good development for anyone who wants something cheap and that works okay. I don;t think that there is anything for apple with this. I mean if squirrel boy™ is on the board it's in his interest to not compete with the iPhone. I can see that one reason that it's going to be released mid '08 is because the iPhone sdk is coming out and they want to let apple make some good money.
As for the hacking of the iPhone I side with apple with this. When you hack it you exploit a hole in the security, so as a responsible company they have to break the hacks with each update. And if you do hack it DON"T UPDATE IT. WAIT FOR THE HACK and please don't complain about apple being anti consumer, if someone was using exploits in OS X, people would be majorly upset.
ALSO, THERE WILL BE NO IPHONE NANO. There's not really a point to an iphone without all the things that are on it now. Especially with Apple trying to trademark 'Multi-touch"
Maybe when flash prices fall enough, and the tech is made cheaper we'll see a cheaper version, but not a nano.
 
inkswamp said:
You don't write your own operating system to do what Google does, even to run a large-scale data center. I'll give them high marks for writing software, but they don't write their own operating system, at least based on what I've read about them. That has a lot to do with the hardware and, barring one example, I can't think of anything Google has done in terms of hardware. If you know that's not the case, please let me know. I'm interested. I'm not sure I understand the point of Google writing their own operating system to run their data center. Do they really do that? If so, why?
Click to expand...

Because when Google started growing their cluster of commodity PCs, there was no operating system software that would do the things they needed it to do. It's true that they use Linux heavily, but I would not be surprised to learn that custom kernel modules have been added, as well as userlevel programs performing operating system-type services. They don't just download the latest images from debian.org and put applications on top.

Probably the best-known example of their custom operating system software is GFS (Google File System), which is what they use for their massive distributed storage requirements. More recently, Amazon has developed something similar for their S3 service.

This is not your typical server operating system software.
 
"Google Anywhere, For Anyone."

Sounds to be the new slogan for Google Web and Web driven devices. :)
 
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