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Update from the CEO

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Re: Update from the CEO

#111

Post by damoncali »

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 actually thought he was talking about Android devices, and wondered why he never got to the part where he said "now there are only going to be 3".

Re: Update from the CEO

#112

Post by ajross »

DigitalJack wrote: post #107
ajross wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very narrow perspective, based solely on what is "painful" for the developer. Developer pain isn't, generally, a good indicator of the public good. Obviously the real driver for "fragmentation" is that there exists a market which is (1) lucrative and (2) easy to enter. So everyone rushes in with their devices and competes. And somehow you think this is a bad thing? Stated simply: "fragmentation" is a side ef…

I agree with the efficiency part with regards to android lowering the Barrier to Entry, but the 2 year contract to make the devices "affordable", surely doesn't work in favor of market efficiency.

Certainly there are factors that work against efficiency. Any kind of lock-in, be it an enforced contract term or a putative monopoly position for Apple is going to harm things. But on balance, Android being cheap and easy (and thus fragmented) has made smartphones cheaper/better. I don't think there's a serious counterargument to be made on that point.

Re: Update from the CEO

#113

Post by DigitalJack »

ajross wrote: post #94
georgemcbay wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Exactly. I mean, Chrome itself (being an app) is pushing updates on android at a cadence now that almost matches what they are doing on the desktop. Doing hardware integration is a lot harder than writing an app. I wish more app developers recognized this. (That said: I do think Google could have done a much better job at separating out the true kernel/HAL/BSP layer stuff, which needs to be done per-device, from the…

I can't even run chrome on my android (2.3). I've resorted to Firefox which is actually pretty nice.

Re: Update from the CEO

#114

Post by aashaykumar92 »

aashaykumar92 wrote: post #97

New Pope, New Head of Android--a wonderful correlation...just kidding. It's an obvious move to try and blend Chromes OS with Android more seamlessly but I think it also means something else BIG at Google is coming--and not their everyday-'big'. As qualified as Pichai is, it doesn't make sense for Rubin to go anywhere UNLESS he truly is upto something groundbreaking. My bet is that Rubin has a vision, perhaps a "moons…

some backup to my above comment: http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/13/andy-rubins-next-moonshot-c...

Re: Update from the CEO

#115

Post by pinaceae »

jholman wrote: post #106
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.

There are lots of Indians in top Google management, definitely, but they're hardly the majority. Maybe 25% of "key divisional leads", maybe 25% of SVPs (a group that greatly overlaps with "key divisional leads"). First of all, there's no "key divisional lead" of "engineering". That's not a division at the top level. That'd be a pretty stupid top-level division, in a company which is mostly engineering (I'm deliberate…

http://ben-evans.com/

thanks for clearing this up, hard to find the real org chart of google.

Re: Update from the CEO

#116

Post by dguido »

m0nastic wrote: post #109
guelo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your slander against Rubin, that he was the major factor, is unsubstantiated. And your 'X' sentence makes no sense, it translates to "He thought nothing was secure", huh?

Dan is characterizing Rubin's position around security as non-inclusive. Not that "nothing was secure", but that any feature (X) that was prioritized was done so not just without taking security into account, but with a belief that security was at odds with said feature (for all examples of X). Basically, in a bastardized form of the "Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick two." I don't know who was the responsible party for Androi…

heh thanks for the support and, yes, you got my position right. For anyone who might be thinking I'm an iOS fanboy or something, our company is probably harder on Apple than any other in the world with regard to security:

http://www.trailofbits.com/research/

http://www.trailofbits.com/books/

That said, Android is objectively a security nightmare.

Re: Update from the CEO

#117

Post by barista »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #102
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.

You noticed that did you? Given the same base OS (Linux) in Android and ChromeOS and much of the same sorts of things. The redundancy of having two teams is pretty obvious. So if everyone agrees that you're going to do both going forward (and I think this is a ringing endorsement of ChromeOS as a 'long term' bet by Google) it only makes sense to make one team out of them. Then the question becomes who leads it? The g…

I think this may sound crazy but android's days as a apremium OS are not as secure as they seem. Take Samsung out of the android picture and you will see that there is barely any device maker that is leading charge.

Add to that the pressure brought on by Microsoft which runs almost the same version of OS on its phone and PC. This will allow them to innovate much faster. Google wants to be there. So even though the brand name will stay, Android as n OS will evolve to what is Chrome today. Completely controlled by Google.

Re: Update from the CEO

#118

Post by burntsushi »

DigitalJack wrote: post #90
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't have been adopted if they had taken a hard line on that issue.

That's like saying people buy Dells for all the crapware they come with.

No it isn't. The GP isn't saying people buy the phones for the crapware, the GP is saying that the carriers wouldn't have adopted it if they couldn't put their bloat on it.

Re: Update from the CEO

#119

Post by dpcx »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #83
recoiledsnake wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 t…

It wouldn't have been adopted if they had taken a hard line on that issue.

So iOS was adopted why...?

Re: Update from the CEO

#120

Post by ajross »

cooldeal wrote: post #96
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>fragmentation exists, how do we make the best of it? >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. There are a billion plus PCs running Windows with various hardware, screen sizes and even different form factors. Yet fragmentation is not as big a problem as on Android. The primary problem comes w…

Your evidence for app incompatibility is... variant icon art and placement on a bunch of pre-ICS phones that aren't sold anymore?

I mean: it's true, Google failed to enforce a layout for the original Android buttons (Home, Menu, Back, and Search). And device manufacturers put them in different places (sometimes omitting Search entirely) and used different art, and that was bad. And Google fixed it with ICS (a year and a half ago!), which uses soft buttons exclusively. So sure, it's a valid point.

But to argue that somehow you can't write a compatible app because Samsung put the back button on the other side from Motorola is just ridiculous, sorry. Get a better example.

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