Is Google making companies pay for software they offer as a free download in the Play store? How does that make any sense?
Companies also have to pay for the Play store.
Android KitKat ships without browser app. OEMs have to license Chrome
41–50 of 67 posts
Re: Android KitKat ships without browser app. OEMs have to license Chrome
#42If only there was a free, completely open source browser with more than 4.5 stars in the Google Play store which could be bundled without any business deals... Bonus points for a cool project codename like Fennec.
If only there wasn't an agreement prohibiting such replacements. Bonus points for calling it the "Open" Handset Alliance agreement. http://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-la...
Then don't sign the agreement? You can still use Android on your products.
Re: Android KitKat ships without browser app. OEMs have to license Chrome
#43It's the IE/Netscape lawsuit all over again.
Google is actually doing the opposite of what Microsoft did: they're unbundling the browser from the OS.
Which is not to say it's a good thing, just that it isn't the same at all.
Re: Android KitKat ships without browser app. OEMs have to license Chrome
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only there wasn't an agreement prohibiting such replacements. Bonus points for calling it the "Open" Handset Alliance agreement. http://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-la...
Then don't sign the agreement? You can still use Android on your products.
That doesn't help companies like Skyhook(and Mozilla if Firefox too is banned by the agreement) because almost all OEMs are current members who are bound to the agreement:
HTC
LG
Sony
Samsung Electronics
ASUSTek
Garmin
Huawei Technologies
Sony Mobile Communications (joined as Sony Ericsson)
Toshiba
Acer
ZTE Corporation
Alcatel Mobile Phones
Compal Communications
Dell
Foxconn
Haier
Kyocera
Lenovo Mobile Communication Technology Ltd.
NEC
Sharp Corporation
Saygus Corporation
Care to guess the marketshare of Android handsets not shipped by one of the above?
More and more things are being moved into Google Apps with each Android release. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-...
Anyway, I don't begrudge Google doing this, I only have an issue with the bastardization of the word "open". AOSP and Android are very different, and when people say Android is open, they actually mean AOSP is open, since Android as shipped on devices is very different and contains a lot of proprietary things.
Re: Android KitKat ships without browser app. OEMs have to license Chrome
#45If only there was a free, completely open source browser with more than 4.5 stars in the Google Play store which could be bundled without any business deals... Bonus points for a cool project codename like Fennec.
Firefox for Android hasn't been called Fennec for a long time :)
They said "codename", to be fair.
Re: Android KitKat ships without browser app. OEMs have to license Chrome
#46Speaking solely as a web developer: good riddance, the pre-KitKat stock Android browser is a piece of shit. It relies on an old fork of Webkit that has none of the features of the modern web, no GPU support, and a lot of outright bugs (like it would flip back to the first frame of a CSS3 animation right before the animation completes, creating an ugly flicker). Without this change we'd be left with Android Browser &…
But speaking as an Android user, Android Chrome is a slow piece of crap, (with that horrible text resizing thing going on) while the stock browser actually works.
Re: Android KitKat ships without browser app. OEMs have to license Chrome
#47This is fud. Browser is still in AOSP. Pretty sure this is it here: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Brow... Obviously you can create the gui for a browser to access the webkit renderer if you didnt want this. Anyway, this is meaningless. No one ships commercial phones without the Play store and Chrome will be just another app bundled with the deal.
Yes, the truth is that the AOSP Browser is now abandonware - Google have stopped developing it in favour of Chrome, and likely won't accept non-security patches for it. I don't think this matters much anyway. Firefox is a more than capable browser. Possibly better than Chrome on Android. It's certainly smoother.
The AOSP Browser uses the system webview, and the webview is now chromium-based and continues to be updated. So it's only abandonware in the sense that the UI didn't change with the latest release.
Re: Android KitKat ships without browser app. OEMs have to license Chrome
#48If only there was a free, completely open source browser with more than 4.5 stars in the Google Play store which could be bundled without any business deals... Bonus points for a cool project codename like Fennec.
If only there wasn't an agreement prohibiting such replacements. Bonus points for calling it the "Open" Handset Alliance agreement. http://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-la...
please stop spreading this as though it were fact. The OHA terms don't prevent you from shipping an alternative browser. They could if google wanted to, but they currently don't.
And the only carrot has to enforce compliance with the OHA is the google apps suite including chrome. If you don't want chrome and the other google apps, you don't have to comply with their compatibility tests.
Re: Android KitKat ships without browser app. OEMs have to license Chrome
#49Speaking solely as a web developer: good riddance, the pre-KitKat stock Android browser is a piece of shit. It relies on an old fork of Webkit that has none of the features of the modern web, no GPU support, and a lot of outright bugs (like it would flip back to the first frame of a CSS3 animation right before the animation completes, creating an ugly flicker). Without this change we'd be left with Android Browser &…
But speaking as an Android user, Android Chrome is a slow piece of crap, (with that horrible text resizing thing going on) while the stock browser actually works.
I've been using Android Chrome as a user since it was in beta; it's been my default browser for at least a year now. I had far more problems with Android Browser than Android Chrome.
(They are working on speed though; not much attention has been paid to performance optimizations besides using the GPU for animations.)
Re: Android KitKat ships without browser app. OEMs have to license Chrome
#50Speaking solely as a web developer: good riddance, the pre-KitKat stock Android browser is a piece of shit. It relies on an old fork of Webkit that has none of the features of the modern web, no GPU support, and a lot of outright bugs (like it would flip back to the first frame of a CSS3 animation right before the animation completes, creating an ugly flicker). Without this change we'd be left with Android Browser &…
Hey, some of us use Firefox.
...which at least follows web standards fairly closely. Firefox is nearly as quick as Chrome at keeping up with the latest and greatest. Android Browser hasn't been updated in years.