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Update from the CEO

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Re: Update from the CEO

#71

Post by vibrunazo »

dragonwriter wrote: post #56
hugoc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that work? What would it be like? Android is powered by native apps, Chrome by cloud apps. Chrome already runs on Android. They have different approaches and I don't see how they how they could form a coherent whole or how one would benefit from a merger with the other. :/

> How would that work? Move Native Client for ARM into Chrome on Android (or, wait until PNaCl is ready, and move that into Chrome for Android). Focus effort on exposing functionality currently available to native Android apps through web APIs in Chrome to make Chrome apps (using NaCl/PNaCl where that kind of performance is needed), rather than Dalvik ones, the preferred mechanism for delivering apps on Android. At t…

Good point. Android is ahead of Web apis, and Google have been adding android apis to the Web for a while (example intents). They just need to keep doing that until there's 1:1 feature parity, so we can develop apps for either one or the other as if they were the same. And the same apps would work predictably on both.

That's a merge.

Re: Update from the CEO

#72

Post by pinaceae »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #59
pinaceae wrote: post #50

Observation by Benedict Evans: almost all key divisional leads at Google were born in India. Android, Engineering, Advertising, Youtube… Polar opposite to Apple, which is a white boys club.

It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that Apple's 20 years older than Google, Apple has had really good retention, and the make-up of the Valley has changed dramatically in that 20 years? The implied racial dig is beneath HN. EDIT: Another thought: Google has also done a huge amount of its growth through acquisitions, whereas Apple has done very few. That likely further pushes Apple's leadership to "old-scho…

another factor might be Google's focus on PhDs.

Re: Update from the CEO

#73

Post by jholman »

mikegioia wrote: post #24
pramodliv1 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah! Looking forward to seeing how that pans out.. ChromeOS on Android?

An operating sytem, on top of an operating system, on top of the linux kernel?

No no, a cloud ecosystem, on an operating system, on top of an operating system, on top of the linux kernel. It's a great idea, especially on a power-constrained device like a phone.

Just add in Bellard's jslinux, and you can go 'round again.

Re: Update from the CEO

#74

Post by svantana »

slig wrote: post #26
enraged_camel wrote: post #5

>>Today Chrome has hundreds of millions of happy users and is growing fast thanks to its speed, simplicity and security. Simplicity and security, fine. But speed? That's hardly the reason people prefer Chrome these days.

Come on. Few nerds like us are concerned with benchmarks and perceived performance. Most people don't know what a browser is or what's their preference in the matter, they just use whatever is installed.

Really? Most people use macs or windows pcs, and neither of those have Chrome preinstalled. Nevertheless, Chrome has plenty of users...

Re: Update from the CEO

#75

Post by georgemcbay »

cek wrote: post #60

> But his insight immediately struck a chord because at the time it was extremely painful developing services for mobile devices. We had a closet full of more than 100 phones and were building our software pretty much device by device. It was nearly impossible for us to make truly great mobile experiences. This is highly ironic statement given that one of the biggest pain developers trying to build mobile experiences…

Having been working in the Android space as a programmer, IMO the idea of Android fragmentation is mostly overblown these days. It was more of an issue in the past, but post-Gingerbread it has ceased to be a practical problem for any dev work I've done.

This isn't to say Android development is wonderful, it (often) isn't. And I've been increasingly concerned with the amount of "OMG HOW?" bugs that have been introduced into the Android OS and frameworks over the past few releases, but generally speaking the code you write for one modern Android device runs (or breaks due to OS or framework bugs) equally across all the phones, at least those that (legally) ship with the Play store.

Re: Update from the CEO

#76

Post by recoiledsnake »

mtgx wrote: post #55
recoiledsnake wrote: post #11

Since Sundar Pichai is the head of ChromeOS, perhaps this move is part of a larger move to unify Android and ChromeOS.

But what does that mean exactly?

I guess that's what Pichai's job will be. I presume the executives are paid a lot to answer tough questions like this and come up with solutions.

Re: Update from the CEO

#77

Post by MatthewPhillips »

cek wrote: post #60

> But his insight immediately struck a chord because at the time it was extremely painful developing services for mobile devices. We had a closet full of more than 100 phones and were building our software pretty much device by device. It was nearly impossible for us to make truly great mobile experiences. This is highly ironic statement given that one of the biggest pain developers trying to build mobile experiences…

I think you are missing the point of Android. Android starts with the premise "fragmentation exists, how do we make the best of it?" and goes from there. The idea that every person on the planet is going to use the same phone with the same capabilities and the same size screen is a fantasy world iOS developers live in.

Re: Update from the CEO

#78

Post by samspenc »

DannyBee wrote: post #32
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #3

Sort-of thank you to the mod who changed the title. The old one ("Google lets go its (sic) Android head Andy Rubin, appoints Sundar Pichai") was editorializing and incorrect, but the new one ("Update from the CEO") is completely useless. On a related note, I find it rather fascinating that Andy is planning on staying in Google. Andy’s decided it’s time to hand over the reins and start a new chapter at Google. I wonde…

The real story? He won. What's left for him to do? Sit around and defend 70% market share for 10 years? Get deposed in a lot of lawsuits? I certainly wouldn't enjoy either :)

Exactly what I was thinking. :)

Re: Update from the CEO

#79

Post by recoiledsnake »

technotony wrote: post #65
cek wrote: post #60

> But his insight immediately struck a chord because at the time it was extremely painful developing services for mobile devices. We had a closet full of more than 100 phones and were building our software pretty much device by device. It was nearly impossible for us to make truly great mobile experiences. This is highly ironic statement given that one of the biggest pain developers trying to build mobile experiences…

Device fragmentation on Android is nothing like fragmentation used to be. At least on Android you can write one app and then tweak it to work on different devices, previously you had to write apps as different as Android/iOS/Windows for each device - and often individual manufacturers even had multiple platforms to write for. And don't even get me started on distribution. You used to have to negotiate with carriers i…

>At least on Android you can write one app and then tweak it to work on different devices, previously you had to write apps as different as Android/iOS/Windows for each device - and often individual manufacturers even had multiple platforms to write for.

>So I think we owe Google some congratulations.

Before Android, you could write a Windows Mobile app and have it run pretty much on every Windows Mobile device and the same with Blackberry and iPhones.

The biggest problem with Android is that the OEMs and carriers abuse the open nature to make their own custom skins which are not compatible with updates. Google did not take a hard line on this like, say, Windows Phone did

Re: Update from the CEO

#80

Post by georgemcbay »

jmillikin wrote: post #23
dguido wrote: post #16

Andy Rubin was the major factor responsible for insecure Android devices. He thought it was impossible to be both secure and 'X' for any 'X'. Meanwhile, Andy Rubin's replacement is Sundar Pichai, SVP for Chrome and ChromeOS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundar_Pichai If you care at all about the security of Android mobile devices, this is probably a good sign. EDIT: I wonder if this helped move Andy out the door? htt…

Not to mention that Chrome has figured out how to push updates, while a majority of Androids are still running a version released over two years ago. If Google can start pushing auto-updates to all of its devices, that would be one of the greatest improvements ever made to Android. Also, one of Chrome's most touted features is performance, which has always been Android's weakest point. Hopefully he'll be willing to a…

Much harder for an OS than an app. Phone makers have their own custom set of drivers for driving their unique hardware and these often have to be changed in subsequent releases to deal with changes to the hardware abstraction layer. And even for releases that don't change the exposed hardware abstraction layer it can be really difficult to know if each phone maker's drivers will deal properly with subtle changes to the underlying OS.

This is not an impossible problem to mostly-solve, but it is orders of magnitude harder than what Chrome browser has to deal with.

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