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Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#51

Post by Xichekolas »

gyardley wrote: post #41
btilly wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see the second wrong. What did Google do? They built their own unlocked phone following the open reference platform that they helped create. And now they are trying to sell that phone on the open market. How is this wrong?

It's not wrong for end-users. But that's not what's being discussed. The wrong is to mobile device manufacturers and networks, who were presumably led to believe that they would not be competing directly with Google itself. If they knew now what they knew then, they would have been much less likely to utilize Android. They feel misled. When competing directly with your partners, it can sometimes be challenging to kee…

If the carriers truly feel slighted, what is to stop them from not certifying new Android phones, freezing Google out?

They still must see some value in Android, or they wouldn't all be tripping over themselves to get the Nexus One.

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#53

Post by bbuffone »

sokoloff wrote: post #48
bbuffone wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone complains about the mobile industry but if I listed the industries that have or are currently screwing me mobile isn't even in the top 10. Health-care, Insurance, Oil, Headphones, Government, Credit cards, Banking, Financial, Video Games, Cable then maybe mobile. My mobile plan is one of the lowest monthly bills that I have based on amount of usage. To my knowledge it is one of the least subsidized industrie…

The Headphones industry is screwing you? And specifically screwing you worse than the others you list later? I'm very curious to hear more about this...

Over the last two years, I have spent about $700 dollars (3x the cost of my iPhone) on 4 different pairs of in-ear headphones that have broken. Wires, connections, shocking my ears have all been part of the experience.

Now for the last week, I have been thinking I am going deaf because I need to turn everything to 11 just to hear it. Then I plugged in a different pair, and almost had my ear drums burst form the loudness.

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#55

Post by txxxxd »

This guy doesn't understand the industry he's writing about.

Telcos benefit by not having the overhead of advertising and supporting phones. They make their money selling services not phones (hence the heavy subsidies.)

Manufacturers benefit by the popularity of the Android platform. It's easy to get people to switch to your hardware if they already know how the OS works and can use all their existing apps.

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#56

Post by seldo »

txxxxd wrote: post #55

This guy doesn't understand the industry he's writing about. Telcos benefit by not having the overhead of advertising and supporting phones. They make their money selling services not phones (hence the heavy subsidies.) Manufacturers benefit by the popularity of the Android platform. It's easy to get people to switch to your hardware if they already know how the OS works and can use all their existing apps.

Well, there's two side to that. The fragmentation of the mobile industry is the problem that Android was built to solve. However, Google getting directly into the business of making and selling handsets means the playing field is no longer level. That was the author's point, at least before he went off the rails and started off-handedly claiming that global warming is a hoax.

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#57

Post by dpritchett »

gaius wrote: post #33
nihilocrat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first thoughts as well. It's about time someone with actual clout gave the mobile phone cartel the shaft. Yes, it's a cartel, when you pay $.50 a text message off your plan with all carriers there's gotta be some price fixing behind the scenes.

Yes but who really does that? Except when roaming. Even a basic plan will have like a thousand texts a month.

I pay for texts on a per-message basis. Single texts are a quarter or so and the smallest minimum text plan is about $5/mo. I don't send 20 texts in a month so I just forego the service altogether.

I still send and receive the occasional text but I don't care enough to pay for the package. It helps that I have a 5GB smartphone data plan.

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#58

Post by ubernostrum »

btilly wrote: post #30
ubernostrum wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your argument, in a nutshell, is "two wrongs do indeed make a right"?

I fail to see the second wrong. What did Google do? They built their own unlocked phone following the open reference platform that they helped create. And now they are trying to sell that phone on the open market. How is this wrong?

Fairly frequently, stories come up of a software vendor whose product was doing well until, one day, (Apple/Microsoft, depending on which OS it was for) comes out with their own bundled or free/cheap software which does the same thing. People often get upset at this potentially business-destroying transformation from "they provide my platform" to "they're my competition". Often there's a round of followup posts which mention the word "sharecropping" over and over, and explain that it's always a bad idea to be a sharecropper since this is how it often ends.

Google has essentially done the same thing -- gone from being "platform" to being "competitor" -- and phone manufacturers are, unsurprisingly, just as unhappy about it as software developers usually are.

The question I'm getting at, then, is why in the software case we often denounce the OS vendors and go on about "sharecropping" and how terrible it is to get caught in this situation, but here we're joyously celebrating Google for doing what is, basically, the same thing (and remember that as much as you may dislike the company which provides your phone service, they are not the company which designs and manufactures your phone handset, so "they deserved it because I hate Verizon/AT&T/Sprint/etc." is misplaced here).

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#59

Post by seldo »

drats wrote: post #12
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #7

I can never tell how much of a given Register article is prescient contrarianism and how much is straight trolling.

Orlowski's articles are often blatant trolls, this one is way out there claiming that the mobile operators who've had us over barrels for so long should be felt sorry for because they can't break the net. Nobody is stopping them making a video on demand service, people are stopping them from making a video on demand that has priority and blocks others. And calling all the civil society groups that fought for net neut…

In addition to being a troll, Mr. Orlowski has a long-standing and irrational dislike of Google in particular, and while this is the most credible piece I've ever seen from him, everything he says about the company should be taken with huge heaping spoonfuls of salt.

In his typical M.O., he takes an initially rational argument (Google is competing with mobile operators it was previously partnering with, which is going to accelerate their transformation into dumb pipes) and then extrapolates to ridiculous conclusions (Google is secretly attempting to build its own private Internet and become the only ISP in the world).

Google is definitely a threat to mobile operators, but then the writing has been on the wall for their business model for a long time -- a disruptively cheap VoIP operator with a data-only handset is going to be the end of the archaic concept of "voice minutes" and thus their profits. It might be Google, or it might not, but it's going to be somebody.

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#60

Post by jsz0 »

I wouldn't even consider a third Google Android handset in the future. HTC (and others) are burning too many bridges not getting updates out the door fast enough. I can't even run most of Google's new Android first party apps on my phone because I'm stuck with Android 1.5 and Sprint/HTC won't commit to any time table on an update. "2010" is as specific as they want to get. Android 3.x may be out before I even get 2.x. Good work guys. Great end user experience. Maybe Google did some shady stuff here but the third party handset makers screwed themselves too.
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