Google invested Billions into Android. Samsung tried to hedge for this by building Tizen(Bada) and realized how much needed to be invested to get an Android competitor going, so they kept the development going, but focused for their Smartwatches, as this would have to be a "if the worst happens" plan, not something that could be a profitable venture. LG has the Palm/HP borne WebOS for their TVs, i suspect with a simi…
It’s possible that Google cutting off Huawei will actually backfire, because it makes having a viable alternative to Android a MUST HAVE instead of just NICE TO HAVE. Perhaps it’s possible to resurrect Blackberry 10 ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_10 ) for example, which seemed to be an impressive piece of engineering that got trampled by Blackberrys failing business. I played with a demo once that could…
The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android
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Re: The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android
#52What I find interesting is that Apache Licensed software can be relicensed even in proprietary form (as long as you make it a derivative work, with your derivative bits with a proprietary license), thus the easy way out seems to be to have a non-US entity make a proprietary fork of AOSP. I do not see a legal reason why this company would not be able to sell AOSP to Huawei under these conditions.
I am sure plenty of us remember the days when free and open source encryption software was distributed exclusively through non-US servers due to US export restrictions.
IANAL, so I wonder if I am missing something?
As for alternative platforms, I imagine plenty are US based/originating (QNX, webOS from Palm/HP originally, Android), but there are alternatives like Jolla and Ubuntu Touch which aren't.
While I dislike Huawei since they decided to stop sharing unlock codes for their phones, Huawei has one killer app that's not very much reliant on Android: camera.
Getting that camera app on one of the less known platforms and enabling Huawei phones for them would still make them appealing to a large number of customers in eg. Europe.
Re: The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android
#53Can someone explained what happened recently to cause such aggressive action against Huawei with ARM , Google etc refusing to work with them. Is it related to arrest of their executive recently ?
It's part of the US/China trade war. Trump believed the existing tariff situation with China was unfair and wanted to negotiate a new trade deal. When negotiations failed he started to implement a bunch of tariffs and trade restrictions on chines goods and companies to try to force their hand. This is just a part of that 'negotiation' strategy. Google, Arm etc. don't want to stop doing business with Huawei (since doi…
Also google, are they so bowed down to the government, that they just accept this, or do they know more reasons to declare Huawei a enemy?
Re: The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Google bought this platform with every dollar invested over more than a decade, they didn't do this only so that Apple had a competitor, but so that THEY had control over mobile eyeballs. Google's biggest trick was developers. They leveraged the decaying state of Java, and it being the default CS language in a lot of places. They simple showed a more attractive opportunity to tenths of thousands of Java devs stuck…
Makes me think whoever comes up with a mainstreamed way to do cross-platform mobile apps in Python will easily capture a large share of recent college grads, too, then.
Re: The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android
#55So they trigger the PRC gov to build their own OS. A temporary setback or worse? Who do we bet on in 10 yrs? State sponsored technology or Google? My bet is on China.
Re: The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android
#56I doubt that. Google is pretty bad at keeping users. (Probably GMail is the strongest anchor point, but as we have seen with the G+ real name gotcha, it's better to be prepared to stop using that. Though of course most GMail users are not prepared for that.) Users will use whatever is the default.
Probably the YouTube app is what users would miss the most. And I don't know whether it works without Play Services. But it certainly works on iOS, so if there were a new platform, Google/Alphabet/YT would make apps for that platform too.
Re: The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android
#57Re: The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's part of the US/China trade war. Trump believed the existing tariff situation with China was unfair and wanted to negotiate a new trade deal. When negotiations failed he started to implement a bunch of tariffs and trade restrictions on chines goods and companies to try to force their hand. This is just a part of that 'negotiation' strategy. Google, Arm etc. don't want to stop doing business with Huawei (since doi…
But why is everyone silently accepting that? Also google, are they so bowed down to the government, that they just accept this, or do they know more reasons to declare Huawei a enemy?
I worked for a non-Google tech company and there is literally code which prevents users in any sanctioned countries from being able to use the services.
Unless Sundar Pichai would like to go to jail, there's very little that they can do about this.
Re: The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's part of the US/China trade war. Trump believed the existing tariff situation with China was unfair and wanted to negotiate a new trade deal. When negotiations failed he started to implement a bunch of tariffs and trade restrictions on chines goods and companies to try to force their hand. This is just a part of that 'negotiation' strategy. Google, Arm etc. don't want to stop doing business with Huawei (since doi…
But why is everyone silently accepting that? Also google, are they so bowed down to the government, that they just accept this, or do they know more reasons to declare Huawei a enemy?