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> Google was terrified that Apple would end up ruling the mobile space. So, to help in the fight against the iPhone at a time when Google had no mobile foothold whatsoever, it was decided that Google would buy Android. And Android would be open source. This is blatantly false. Google bought Android in 2005, two years before the iPhone was announced.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Google is stuck behind a rock and a hard place. If they don't try to create incentives for a unified experience, they get bashed for encouraging fragmentation, if they do assert a level of control, they get bashed for not being completely open. This is exactly the position Microsoft was in during the mid-1990s, even before they went after Netscape. The article is saying that Google is even applying some of the same…
I don't think Apple will be a good defense if Android's market share is 80%.
Most of the examples of Google closed apps that are not part of the AOSP release are in fact apps that are based off of Google data-center services. Would it really help Samsung if the source to the Gmail app was open? Since Google controls the server side, and the client-server protocol, it limits the amount of innovation they can do. The web equivalent would be like claiming that Chrome OS isn't open because the so…
> Google is stuck behind a rock and a hard place. If they don't try to create incentives for a unified experience, they get bashed for encouraging fragmentation, if they do assert a level of control, they get bashed for not being completely open. This is exactly the position Microsoft was in during the mid-1990s, even before they went after Netscape. The article is saying that Google is even applying some of the same…
History may not repeat, but it rhymes.
"In an ocean with great waves, whales fly into the air unnoticed, but in a calm pond, even the tiniest minnow makes a ripple." -confucius When the iPhone debuted, no doubt Google sensed the impact, and Apple's ability to create an effective closed ecosystem had already been proven with iTunes. I believe that Google wanted to undermine the market long enough to understand it. True enough, "android winning" was not the…
Impossible. Google bought Android years before Apple sold a single phone.
I think alot of people misunderstand what open source means. It's nothing more than allowing people to see the source code, and use it (including forking). Open source doesn't require you to cooperate with anyone, it doesn't require you to give away access to APIs, it doesn't require you to do anything beyond whatever is explicitly stated in the license. Google, Canonical, Oracle, IBM, Red Hat, SUSE, etc... aren't re…
Well, there is a philosophy (or rather, various different philosophies) that go along with the legal structures, and different projects have different levels of adherence to those ideas. It eventually comes down to perception of value. Part of the original attraction of Android was its openness, if Google is now closing off substantial functionality, to head off competition, then it's not unfair for people to re-eval…
Very well put! Its not a legal perception that theres something wrong about what they are doing(and nobody are saying that they cannot do it in the legal aspect).. its a betrayal of some part that make people defend android for what it is, a open source project.. its the ideal behind the project that is being broken
If its not like that anymore, the same people that support it for its openess should be aware of it.. and see that things are actually, gradually and silently changing..
So, every Samsung phone effectively comes with three versions of the main apps - the AOSP version, the Google Play version, and Samsung's bloatware? This seems like a terrible situation for users. Can someone with a Samsung smartphone confirm this? If this is the case, how are the apps organized when you first buy the phone - are they all in one big apps list?
In fact, I've had AOSP apps disappear from my Cyanogen Mod ROM when I installed gapps, although I don't know if that was due to being overwritten or just part of the install script.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Linus Torvalds famous for his iron grip of Linux? In a very different way, to be sure, but it's my understanding that just because you make something open source doesn't mean you have to (or even should) relinquish control. I think it's also pretty standard to open-source the core and keep the baubles proprietary. GitHub, for example, made their git interaction library open-source b…
Every open source project has someone (or some group) in control, and contributions can't land without their say so. But anyone who feels that the current leadership is doing it wrong can fork the code and try to persuade people to use their version. This is very important to the way open source software works. Google have a level of control beyond that: they undermine anyone trying to fork Android by not letting the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think Apple will be a good defense if Android's market share is 80%.
80% does not a monopoly make. Microsoft was in an entirely different position at the time.
I also recall reading one of the EU's regulators (was it Joaquin Almunia?) say that (paraphrasing) "we start sniffing around when any one party gets a market share north of 60%." Unfortunately, I cannot find that article.