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Google Tightening Control Over Android as Fragmentation Increases

Surprised you didn't include such stretches as iphone4's-glass-back-scratches-gate-gate-gate or the gardengate or you're-missing-the-point-gate.

Google cuts corners with 3.0 and then uses that as an excuse not to release the source code/excuse them from their commitment to being open.

Lets replace those words and see if there are similarities.

Apple cuts corners testing the new Macbook Airs with an OS update and then uses that as an excuse to release an update a while later.

Apple fails to mention that you shouldn't bridge the iPhone antennas in a specific spot and then uses that as an excuse to give out free bumpers or cases for a limited time.

Apple fails to get iOS 4 to work properly on old hardware with insufficient ram and uses it as an excuse to depreciate it.

Now think for a second do any of those statements make any sense at all? Not to mention isn't being open supposed to help you fix bugs or whatnot? Isn't closing it doing the exact opposite of help? It would be like if Apple recalled all the bumpers after people claimed the bumpers helped alleviate the antenna issue.
 
benthewraith said:
You mean AntennaGates 1 & 2, iOS 4 on iPhone 3G, the light bleeding on the iPads before shipping, the Macbook Airs crashing when using iTunes aren't examples of Apple cutting corners to get a product to release? I will buy Mac probably for the rest of my life so long as the company is in business and putting out great products with great operating systems.

And they didn't spin it perfectly. Steve Jobs told consumers they were holding the phone wrong and pretended the problem would go away.
Click to expand...

But he told the truth— they were holding it wrong. I don't know why more people don't realize this. He saw the YouTube video and the abnormal way it was being "death-gripped" and was speaking to that.

Also, where do you get this "he pretended the problem would go away" from? They held a media event about it. And for what it's worth, the problem actually did go away... The iPhone 4 is Apple's best selling and least-returned smart phone ever.
 
I don't think it was a planned bait/switch. I think is was 'bait and try figure a way to make money from it'. (they make money by getting as many people to use internet as possible, so it made sense to start with Open).

In the case of both Apple and Google, they had to adapt to their successes by adjusting their policies, position, etc. For Apple it was the success of the Appstore... they took a 'control' standpoint (for user experience, etc) and they had to relax some rules when necessarily and where it made sense.

For Google, their success was the widespread usage of Android, and they are now taking steps to reign it in when it gets out of hand (fragmentation).

Come to think of it, I'm not even sure if it was even 'bait'.. What choice did some of these manufactures have? They had to quickly react to Apple's entry into the market. I don't think Samsung/LG/etc are that dumb to not know the risks...they could have adopted another OS (MS, linux) or go with Google and stay in the game. You have to take some risks and quickly adapt/respond where it make sense. Nokia did not respond well, and I think they suffered from it.



P.
 
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gatearray said:
But he told the truth— they were holding it wrong. I don't know why more people don't realize this. He saw the YouTube video and the abnormal way it was being "death-gripped" and was speaking to that.

Also, where do you get this "he pretended the problem would go away" from? They held a media event about it. And for what it's worth, the problem actually did go away... The iPhone 4 is Apple's best selling and least-returned smart phone ever.
Click to expand...

There were countless photographs showing steve jobs using the phone and holding it EXACTLY the way that caused problems ("death grip" is a misnomer - it is enough to hold it so that your palm bridges the bottom left gap).
 
Let's not all get carried away from both sides here. This just means that android recognizes the potential pitfall in having a diverse and inconsistent user experience. While this recognition is bad for android fans who prefers a particular implementation of android by one of the numerous manufactures; it can be a plus as they are looking at ways to provide better user experiences similar to that found on the iPhone.

Android is still open, but will not give out early access of the code unless you play well with Google and their future plans. Anyone who thinks Android was entirely open was kidding themselves, when a large company has a project it has to improve their bottom line or the project goes to scraps.

Android is still "open" in many other ways...
 
It's ok, sometimes things just don't work out like we want them to. Open-ish is still pretty good, right? I mean its obviously better than closed. Right? ...better google it to make sure
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; nb-no) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

Funkymonk said:
ikir said:
I have 2 friends with android, one with an HTC and one with Samsung Galaxy S.

They have different OS versions since they aren't able to update it, they get crap bugs and error in almost every software they use. I say to one of them to update to lastest version, he told me he can't because he need to do it from "root"... i don't know, but at least i was able to install WhatsApp on their phones, the only thing i care :p Naturally they are using their device at minimum, few software and one of them neither have 3G connection. When we are at pub, they all use my iPhone for browsing and gaming (sigh) as always has been.
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lol I think your friends may have some serious mental disabilities. jesus christ you're making it sound like android is unusable lol
Click to expand...

Well it is unsusable on the Galaxy S at least. It felt like an Ericsson from 1999. It took 10sec to open an SMS. Internet was barely usable, so I used my gf's iPhone 3GS all te time instead.
 
Looming threats from Facebook/Amazon

I get the feeling that Google wouldn't be rushing to control the pace and scope of future Android releases if it weren't for Facebook and Amazon looking to make their own plays using Android. Facebook is starting to partner with OEMs to make super-cheap Facebook phones based on the Android kernel. If consumers find that a good enough type of smartphone, it'll cut off Google at the knees. Amazon just launched its App Store and is partnering to have it on many Android phones. If Amazon's experience is better than Google's it could obviate some of the need for Google services on mid-high end phones.

The last thing Google wants is for its proprietary crown jewels (search, maps, docs, etc.) to be marginalized, and both Facebook and Amazon can make that happen. So it's up to Google to rein the OEM's in. I honestly don't blame them if that's what's happening. But it goes to show what companies are willing to do to attain market share, and what they're willing to do afterward to protect it.
 
Mattie Num Nums said:
Thats not at all what this article is saying. The Android project is still going to be "open source".
Click to expand...

You know that is a lie!
:): And you'll certainly eat **** from Google honchos.
Because you are NOT able of accepting the truth!

Google lied, and the media, did not that.
Android is not open source. You can download it, that is IT.
 
Apple knew what it takes to make a mobile OS that isn't as messed up as Windows. And now, so does Google.

The fact that other companies can co-opt their product and stake their own claim to it says Google did it wrong in the first place.
 
I dont think 99.9 percent of the millions of Android users will care if source code is available.
 
some people need to realize that the strength of android lies within its customization options, and this won't go away. you don't like the default home app, you can change it. there are a lot of choices available. you don't need to have a rooted phone to do so.

do you even know why there were custom roms in the first place? it was all about integrating features from newer versions of android, because the phone manufactures were too lazy to push updates for their devices leaving users with older android versions and the worst thing, with possible security risks.

i think it's a good thing that google finally steps up, because the fragmentation is indeed a huge problem in the android world.
 
Google made the right decision here. Android is a fantastic os but has problems caused by phone manufacturers messing with the os.

Interestingly if you just reload an android phone with googles official branch os android os, it performs so much better.

I see this as only a good thing. iOS needs some more pressing competition as is pretty much stagnated for the last year or so.
 
X2468 said:
I do agree that Apples current advantages are:

1) Brand Name
2) Excellent Product Design
3) Huge Population Of Cult Like Followers
4) Steve Jobs, Worlds Best Sales Person
Click to expand...

Brand name huh? And how do you think it got here? I'd say by making great products.

Yet change is brewing, nothing lasts forever.

Be prepared.
Click to expand...

Right.
 
The more I think about it the more I believe this is a bad thing for consumers.

Yes, you reduce the fragmentation issue but it's the worst possible way of doing it. Google is, basically, playing favourites here and WILL limit choice in the long term. All those lovely cheap Android handsets from ZTE and the like are likely to end up shipping with significantly older versions of Android and possibly without certain Google services. Attempts to bring better App Stores such as the Amazon version are likely to be massively hurt by this, same for projects like the rumoured Facebook phone / OS. Alternatives to Google services are likely to become rare, at least on out of the box handsets. Alternative skins such as TouchWiz, Sense and MotoBlur are probably going to suffer badly which, regardless of your particular feelings towards those skins, does reduce the choice available to consumers. It's probably going to make it harder for the mod community to cook up custom ROM's, the list just goes on and on.

I can also see OEM's backing away from Android a bit, especially as WP7 starts to gain traction. Putting and maintaining Android on these handsets seems to require a reasonable amount of effort, certainly more than WP7 does. It's been worth it to this point as they can customise the devices to help them stand out in the market but if Google start significantly reducing their ability to do that....

It's certainly going to be interesting to see where this goes, Google have taken a pretty big gamble here and it remains to be seen if that gamble pays off.
 
Finally it sinks in there too... :p

Good for Google, but this will no doubt annoy their users. Google would have been better off to have used a more controlled ecosystem in the first place, and not raised expectations from them to manage an open system gracefully. That has to be incredibly hard to do with all the many needs & wants from their manufacturers, and I don't understand why the bright visionaries at Google didn't see this coming.

Or maybe they did, and they just wanted brands start using Android, being an attractive choice by being open, and then later lock them in. This could have been their strategy all along, and then I wonder who's being the jerk here - Google or the commonly mentioned Apple.
 
Bye Bye Baby said:
It seems like Google has finally woken up that a totally open os is a total mess.
Click to expand...

An open OS is not a mess per se, but once they want as many manufacturers as possible to build phones with it, yes, then it becomes a mess. Because with each manufacturer, there's a different plan for how they want to do things, and stay different from their competitors. The net result is that neither can get the updates out as quickly as Apple (because there's no unified direction), which is one of the companies Google is competing with here.

This is a kind of brutal way to get out of that situation (they could have done it WP7-style and distributed updates directly to the phones to avoid implementation delays), but sure, it should work...
 
Mattie Num Nums said:
Thats not at all what this article is saying. The Android project is still going to be "open source".
Click to expand...

But this is hardly honouring the spirit of open-source.

It's about full disclosure. The source and binaries should be made available at exactly the same time.

Google is just utterly embarrassed at having to do some serious corner cutting to rush the product to market as a viable answer to iOS and the iPad/iPad 2.
 
NAG said:
Google cuts corners with 3.0 and then uses that as an excuse not to release the source code/excuse them from their commitment to being open.
Click to expand...


Which part of "still, Rubin argued that Google has not changed its philosophy about Android being an open source project" didn't you and many of the others here understand?

Google just does not want to publish the code base of the CURRENT version of Android 3 NOW because the code in their opinion simply is to immature to be released to a large audience. Google NEVER said that they would not release the code at all.

Besides, the source code for all currently available Android 1.x to 2.x devices is out there in the repositories. Just go and check it out and compile it.

And about the "fragmentation issues": That's the price that you pay for openness and freedom. You could also call it "diversity", which is a GOOD thing and something that you will never get in Apple land. It's either Apple's way or the highway. No diversity, individuality or freedom there.
 
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Winni said:
Which part of "still, Rubin argued that Google has not changed its philosophy about Android being an open source project" didn't you and many of the others here understand?

Google just does not want to publish the code base of the CURRENT version of Android 3 NOW because the code in their opinion simply is to immature to be released to a large audience. Google NEVER said that they would not release the code at all.

Besides, the source code for all currently available Android 1.x to 2.x devices is out there in the repositories. Just go and check it out and compile it.

And about the "fragmentation issues": That's the price that you pay for openness and freedom. You could also call it "diversity", which is a GOOD thing and something that you will never get in Apple land. It's either Apple's way or the highway. No diversity, individuality or freedom there.
Click to expand...

I think a lot of the people here didn't read/understand the article correctly or their reality distortion field is blinding them.
 
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This is more about the pride injury to the Android spruking geeks than it is anything else.

To Android users: They won't even know the difference for the most part. Their phone is cheaper than the iphone, even if it does ef all. That's really all that matters for the most part.

iOS users.... Well... It's vindication that the system that they've put their faith in was on the right track.

But what most people seem to have missed, is that it's clear that everything that Android first claimed it would be able to do, (easily scalable OS, broad application support etc) has fallen over. And why?

Well.... Competing with the iPad has caused the system to fall over. Things that Google claimed that the system could accommodate easily, has not materialised. Expensive substandard products that have been severely limited by the fragmentation, has ensured that the development for tablet devices has become a huge headache, causing developers to drop their projects into development and support hell..

There's now several Android tablet devices on the market, and the market is about to explode into a sector consumed by products that are so munted by lack of vision and 'customisation', that they become practically unusable.

But hey... who cares right? It's a 'consumer device'. As long as it plays flash and accesses websites, it'll still rock on harder than the iPad right?

Wrong.

Business is quickly adopting this highly versatile piece of technology. My own personal iPad is developing more and more interest around my own workplace. And I work in medical.

The ipad, and possibly (but probably not) the RIM playbook, along with the HP and potential Dell offerings, is likely to leave Android looking like a child's toy, unless it can get it's **** together. And that is what this is all about. What we are seeing with the iPad is nothing... nothing compared to what happens when the business sector finally gets to grips on it's full potential.

If Android continues to look like a toy, open system or not... Google are going to be left holding a teddybear in the rain while the big kids drive away.

This isn't about the handset manufacturers. This isn't about the 'toy' tablet makers. This is about the future that most of you, can't quite get to grips on yet. And Google hadn't seen coming.
 
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