Who Stands To Benefit From Open?
Yesterday Businessweek broke the news that Google wants to regain more control over its Android operating system, causing quite a stir in gadget circles. A week before, it transpired that the release of the Android 3.0 Honeycomb source code will be delayed, possibly foreshadowing the developments this week. Notably, there’s been talk about Google planning to exert more control over Android devices from Android 3.0 onwards as early as June 2010, but Google denied these claims back then of course.
I personally find the whole commotion around this move among consumers somewhat baffling. The kind of openness that Android proliferated on didn’t benefit endusers in the slightest, but only network operators and device manufacturers. I couldn’t care less about them and incidentally find it curious that seemingly the whole Apple press suddenly feels compelled to defend the rights and freedom of network operators and Android device manufacturers that in the past they thrived on denigrating.
I believe that overall Android user experience only stands to benefit from this change if Google manages to take back the reins (though a change for the better is anything but a certainty) and thus welcome this news. As someone rightly pointed out in a very clever comment here:
Of course being or not being open source has nothing to do with whether a piece of software is any good or not, and that’s what we Android users should be most concerned with. It’s time we gave up the fantasy that Android is better than the competition because it’s open source and judged it on whether it’s a better, more reliable, easier to use system than others on the market.
Unfortunately i’m afraid the most likely outcome from this would be that every Android device manufacturer forks its own operating system from the Android 2.x branch, especially considering the huge investments companies like HTC, Samsung, Motorola or SE have already undertaken to differentiate their offerings. I have a hunch that would be the worst possible outcome for Android user experience.
Added later: Has the forking already begun?
Ads vs. Results on Google
By Aza Raskin.
For DecorMyEyes, Bad Publicity Is a Good Thing. The NYTimes on how an e-commerce site exploits terrible customer service for google-juice.
Update: Google already reacted to the article (via):
We were horrified to read about Ms. Rodriguez’s dreadful experience. Even though our initial analysis pointed to this being an edge case and not a widespread problem in our search results, we immediately convened a team that looked carefully at the issue. That team developed an initial algorithmic solution, implemented it, and the solution is already live. I am here to tell you that being bad is, and hopefully will always be, bad for business in Google’s search results.
Update #2: Now federal agents have stepped in as well. Apparently it doesn’t always pay off to be unscrupulous.
20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web is a beautiful online book by Google. If you want to download it (as i immediately did), clicking the “Print Book”-button will give you that option. Unfortunately the resulting PDF has a terrible layout.
Google’s best deal, ever
Which begs for an interesting comparison: Google acquired Android, Inc. in 2005, for a rumored $50 million or something like that. Microsoft acquired Danger, Inc., another Andy Rubin venture, in 2008 for a rumored price around $500 million. One of these ventures went on to become a dominant force in the smartphone market. The other resulted in the Microsoft Kin debacle. Just saying…
