Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary • Hacker News Board

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#131

Post by gcb0 » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 8:59 AM UTC

tluyben2 wrote: post #124

dmethvin wrote: post #34

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…

Android is open enough to replace all Google apps with your own (Samsung) and open your own appstore (Amazon). Also companies are completely free to not pick Android (Tizen / Firefox OS / ?) and they are free not to license the Google apps and put their own or (other) open source ones. It would be hard to make Google out to be a monopolist via that route. MS was different; there weren't much alternatives and the alte…

Did you even read the article?

And if you want to stay on the technical side.. then what about contributors? I've helped port android to a couple devices. I had no idea google had a contract obligation with hardware makers that my work should have to be used in one way or another. I feel dirty.

edit: the Acer example goes exactly against what you mention. They tried to ship a fork, with some of the substitutions you mention. google released the layers.

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#132

Post by bookwormAT » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 9:01 AM UTC

saiyan wrote: post #75

hackula1 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android clearly went in a different direction post-iPhone.

Agreed. All those videos of Android demo or prototype units clearly showed Android was a Blackberry clone (just look at that tiny touchpad for navigating around Android OS) and changed its design direction after iPhone made its appearance.

nonesense. Android is a software platform that companies can build sofware and devices on. Android is not a device, and it's not an "operating system" in the sense that people use this word today. It is a fundament that you can build an operating system with, and a cross platform that allows applications run on different software, as long as this software is based on Android.

If you want to show off what Android can do, you put it on all kinds of devices that people are using at the moment. If everyone has a Blackberry, you want to show that you can make a software for Blackberrys based on Android. If everyone is hyped on digital cameras, you show a software and ui for such a camera.

Android used to have 3 prototypes in its early stages: a blackberry type, a tablet-type device, and the device that later became the Tmobile G1, the first android phone. The platform never changed course, and it clearly never was a Blackberry clone.

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#133

Post by tluyben2 » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 9:04 AM UTC

gcb0 wrote: post #131

tluyben2 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android is open enough to replace all Google apps with your own (Samsung) and open your own appstore (Amazon). Also companies are completely free to not pick Android (Tizen / Firefox OS / ?) and they are free not to license the Google apps and put their own or (other) open source ones. It would be hard to make Google out to be a monopolist via that route. MS was different; there weren't much alternatives and the alte…

Did you even read the article? And if you want to stay on the technical side.. then what about contributors? I've helped port android to a couple devices. I had no idea google had a contract obligation with hardware makers that my work should have to be used in one way or another. I feel dirty. edit: the Acer example goes exactly against what you mention. They tried to ship a fork, with some of the substitutions you…

I read the article; if you want out of their grip you can. You just need to provide alternatives for the Google apps and appstore. That is not trivial, but for a company like Samsung that wouldn't be that big of an issue either.

Acer tried to release it while still wanting to be in the 'Android family' (Open Handset Alliance); they didn't have their own substitutes and didn't want to make a clean break with Google (OHA). If they wanted that and would have provided an appstore, they could've.

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#134

Post by r0h1n » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 9:11 AM UTC

cromwellian wrote: post #24

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…

Aren't we forgetting about the closed-source elephant in the room - Google Play Services - the "platform behind the platform"?

>> Play Services has system-level powers, but it's updatable. It's part of the Google apps package, so it's not open source. OEMs are not allowed to modify it, making it completely under Google's control. Play Services basically acts as a shim between the normal apps and the installed Android OS. Right now Play Services handles the Google Maps API, Google Account syncing, remote wipe, push messages, the Play Games back end, and many other duties. If you ever question the power of Google Play Services, try disabling it. Nearly every Google App on your device will break. [Source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/balky-carriers-and-sl...]

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#135

Post by alexeisadeski3 » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 9:15 AM UTC

sbuk wrote: post #109

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can anything other that 99% market share even be considered a monopoly? If it's 80% or 90% then there is obviously choice and thus no monopoly. Anti trust is such bunk...

Monopoly is not antitrust. Abusing control of a market is. A monopoly (which is usually considered to be dominance if a market place) is not itself unlawful.

Anti trust is the legislation policing monopolies, at least in the US, and it is such legislation which I consider bunk.

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#136

Post by bad_user » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 9:15 AM UTC

eYsYs wrote: post #86

bad_user wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're partly right, but in regards to the Gmail app, what I don't like about Android is that it doesn't come with a good email client that's not GMail. Android's GMail client is very polished and there's not much in it that's specific to Gmail, it could be a generic email client that works with POP3/IMAP/SMTP and other standards as well. The experience of users that aren't into Android's own services do suffer. But…

> What I don't like about Android is that it doesn't come with a good email client that's not GMail. That would be like saying that the default camera app does not come with filters, shaders and other features that you like. What Google does is, gives a good enough app for generic use and leaves options open for developers to make better things and put them on the Play Store. If Google starts incorporating all such f…

Yeah, but the email app on iOS is pretty polished and nowadays people expect the stock browser and the stock email app to be pretty good, especially on mobile devices. I'm not saying that Android's out of the box functionality should encompass everything, just the basic necessities, like email and web browsing. And I don't want people without an Android to get the wrong idea - Android does come with a standard email client, it's just that it's much, much less polished than the GMail app, which is a shame.

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#137

Post by innino » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 9:18 AM UTC

coopdog wrote: post #108

tonyfelice wrote: post #8

"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…

I will only buy / recommend nexus phones. Knowing that the phone will be updated quickly and for a long time is worth a premium, rather than being a cash in strat for Google.

my impression of nexus devices is that you are tied to the package of google services. is this so, or can a nexus-user break free from google's domain and enjoy the benefits of a quality low-cost device without being beholden to the google ecosystem?

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#138

Post by Tyrannosaurs » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 9:19 AM UTC

What's interesting is how having a mobile OS is now only one part of the offering needed to be successful, and is arguably the easiest part.

To be successful on mobile you also need a fairly extensive layer of services. Some of those (web, mail and so on) are easy to bolt together but others such as maps and app stores are far harder and are about data and commercial deals as much as they are about software. While it would be wrong to say that these services can't be opened up, in many cases doing so isn't as straight forward as sharing source code.

It doesn't feel as if Google has changed so much as what it means be a mobile OS has.

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#139

Post by bad_user » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 9:27 AM UTC

r0h1n wrote: post #134

cromwellian wrote: post #24

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…

Aren't we forgetting about the closed-source elephant in the room - Google Play Services - the "platform behind the platform"? >> Play Services has system-level powers, but it's updatable. It's part of the Google apps package, so it's not open source. OEMs are not allowed to modify it, making it completely under Google's control. Play Services basically acts as a shim between the normal apps and the installed Android…

Google Play Services are not (currently) required for developing and running apps, unless those apps integrate with Google's services, like Google Accounts and Google Maps. Of course nearly every Google App will break if you disable it, since every Google App is proprietary and Google's Play Services is their common framework.

The question is - do third-party apps break if you disable Google Play Services? And the answer is that it depends. If the app needs Google's services then it will stop working. However, making Play Services open-source, at least for the functionality provided right now, wouldn't do any good. Because those services rely on Google's server-side infrastructure, so you're still at their mercy.

The only thing that bothers me is the Wifi-based location tracking. Google collects info about nearby Wifi networks and so the phone is able to give a pretty good estimate of latitude/longitude coordinates, even without turning the GPS on. Turning Google Play Services off means that Wifi-based location tracking stops working. And this is a pain, given that many apps these days (Facebook, Twitter) want to get your current city and so Facebook for example is accessing my GPS every time I open the app, with no way to turn this functionality off and it's consuming my battery and the GPS status notifier is annoying. In case you're wondering I had to turn Wifi-based location tracking because of a bug in the latest Android 4.3, as it is preventing my Nexus 4 to go to sleep, thus draining my battery.

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#140

Post by stefanve » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 9:29 AM UTC

I don't understand the point of this article especially the bit about being an evil genius by ways of making excellent best in business cross OS api's. Really? being competitive is being an evil genius? If amazon is willing it can open there api's to none FireOS apps they have the infrastructure and money to support it, but they don't.

As a user I'm happy that Google is making sure that I can hop device manufactures without loosing my apps or functionality, if everybody would roll out there own app store and removed Google's you would be locked in with the OEM. Now you can safely change to a different phone, also they don't mind you downloading the Google apps when using an alternative ROM.

Android is open source but does that mean that you are not aloud to make money of it by providing closed source apps and service, many open source companies do that. The work that went in to Android if freely available for competitors. Lots of kernel enchantments went back in to Linux and now you have Ubuntu touch and Firefox OS both based on the Android kernel which in turn is based on Linux, how cool is that.