
Android Isn’t About Building a Mobile Platform - barredo
http://www.tightwind.net/2011/01/android-isnt-about-building-a-mobile-platform/
======
vessenes
Intriguingly, he suggests that the Google App store kind of sucks because
Google wants to push developers toward using advertising in apps, feeding
their core business.

In his argument Google doesn't really want awesome pay apps, they want awesome
ad-supported apps that use AdMob.

Interesting idea, and possibly true. I have so far considered the crappy
Market to be a result of Google's internal algorithmic-search-is-better-than-
human-editing approach, and their lateness to the game, and their subpar
graphics performance for developers, and the comparatively poor UI culture at
Google.

Given all these complaints, it's amazing there's a market at all!

If his take is true, then the worst thing the Android team did last year was
screw up the patent situation on iAds. Mobile ads truly suck right now, the
same sort of UI re-think that Google did in the late 1990s for web ads needs
to be done on the mobile platform. So far, I think Apple is leading this
charge.

~~~
codingthewheel
How does the Android app store suck? And how is it amazing that there's an
Android market at all--?

Maybe this used to be the case. Speaking as a user of and developer for both
iOS and Android devices, I think this argument is a little outdated. It just
doesn't bear out in practice. I think this has become a mantra that iOS
developers and users tell themselves because they think, wrongly, that Android
poses a threat to them. It does not. Not to them.

Anyway, it's usually easier to get an app released for Android, by far, than
to release the equivalent app for iOS. Everything from the development
language to the approval process conspires to make this so. (If you think you
can get an Objective C app to market quicker than an equivalent programmer can
get a Java app to market, you're either a genius or you're in for a rude
awakening. Add App Store woes on top of that. Arbitrary bannings. And the
like. These things matter. They cost you time and energy. And they're much
more prevalent on iOS than Android.)

What about the user being able to find, purchase, and download apps? It's
painless on Android, and it's painless on iOS.

Number of apps? There you may have a point. Android doesn't have the number of
apps that iPhone has - merely tens of thousands rather than a hundred or two.
And counting.

Fragmentation. Eh. There's less of this than you might think. Developing for
Android is very similar to developing for a PC. You're never 100% sure about
the hardware you're running on, and yet, most PC applications manage to run
just fine. This is what hardware abstraction is all about. Android does an
excellent job of it, and most of the time, you program without worrying about
the hardware.

So while I think the author has some interesting observations about Google's
larger strategy, the "Android app store is broken" argument doesn't really
hold water anymore, at least not for me. If anything, Android apps are a
breath of fresh air.

~~~
vessenes
I agree with your comments in general, and I have developed apps on iOS and
Android personally; I had a somewhat similar experience to what you describe.

That said, I was actually thinking of a different point, and one that is still
a significant pain point for developers (really on both platforms) -- app
discovery. It's bad on both platforms, but it's definitely worse on Android.

This is in part because of Google's ethos and choices -- search many a word on
the Android market, you'll find what you were looking for, and six copies of
the same name item from China which ask for dubious permissions -- and in
part, just the nature of the app-sales-on-a-small-mobile-screen beast right
now.

Apple has this same problem, as evidenced by the many, many graphs showing the
sales hockeystick once you hit 'top ten' status, but my guess is that there is
a little more love shared around with different developers than with Google.

Why do I think that? I think that because "Robo Defense" has been a top game
on Android since I bought my first G1. Every day, every week, every month.

Rather than someone at Google judiciously marketing and bringing out new app
and game developer product on the 'top' section of the store, they are
totaling up all sales ever, and giving those people top slots. This is what I
mean by the algorithm making things worse, in this case, particularly for app
discovery.

Even a simple 'tops this month' with an editor-chosen list on the first day of
the month would make a big difference in reach for developers.

In the end, I guess I disagree with you -- I think the Android app store is
broken, as is the Apple app store. It's just that Google's is a little bit
worse, and doesn't seem to have a credible plan to change the game yet. We'll
see!

------
TomOfTTB
He's not wrong but I don't agree.

Advertising is a form of payment not an end in itself. People still pay Google
they just do it in attention which Google than turns into money by selling
that attention to someone else.

So to say Google isn't a platform company because they're really trying to
control the ad market with their platform is like calling Microsoft a money
company because they're trying to control the OS to sell Office.

Also I don't think Google's best interest is in pushing the market away from
"paid for software". If you're giving something away for free it helps you to
have someone trying to sell it because you can get away with more. Google Docs
is missing a ton of Office features but people rarely mention them
because...it's free. So it's in their best interest to keep paid options
around. If everyone was free they'd have to really compete.

~~~
lukeschlather
The article said nothing about Google being a platform company, only that
they're not looking to build a _mobile_ platform in Android. A possibly more
direct way of looking at this is that Android does not, from Google's
perspective, compete with iOS. Google's intention is to make the same money
whichever operating system the user is running, and Android only exists to
enable new services that Apple moves to slow to allow (like Navigation.)

~~~
TomOfTTB
Right. I'm saying Google is a platform company (among other things) BECAUSE
they're building a mobile platform. I'm disputing the fact that he doesn't
think that. The logic I used is this...

\- Apple is a platform company because they charge people money for their
platform

\- That defines a standard of "A platform company is a company that creates a
platform and trades it for something of value [in Apple's case money]"

\- Google creates a platform [Android]

\- The only difference is Google's "something of value" is attention. They
then trade that attention for money in the case of Ads

So Google does compete with iOS. The only difference is they're deriving value
differently (one directly from payment the other from Ads).

But if someone buys an iPhone they aren't seeing the Ads Google's trying to
deliver through Android and if someone buys an Android phone Apple isn't
getting that person's money. So they're most certainly in competition

(On your last point to say Google doesn't care what OS the user is running
doesn't track for me. Apple has demonstrated their intention to dominate the
iPhone "App Ad" market and muscle others out of it if they can)

~~~
lukeschlather
Android is not the platform Google is selling. Google Apps is the platform
Google is selling. You can access Google Apps through an Android device, but
Google doesn't make a meaningfully larger amount of money when you do than
when you access Google Apps through any other means.

------
RyanMcGreal
It goes back to Spolsky's famous Strategy Letter V [1]: like so many
successful companies before them, Google aims to commoditize the complement.

[1] <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html>

------
samd
In other words, Google is a monopoly. Their strategy is to monopolize markets
and charge artificially high prices for advertising.

It's a weird sort of monopoly though, their users can go elsewhere, but their
users are not their customers. Their customers are advertisers, and they are
basically forced to use Google.

~~~
dexen
Weren't there voices warning about that possibility back when Google was
buying DoubleClick?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleClick#Acquisition_by_Goog...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleClick#Acquisition_by_Google.2C_Inc).
comes to mind

In any case, what you wrote seems to confirm that Google is advertising
company rather than general internet service company or web search company.

Edit: in any case, Google, while having smaller revenue and market cap than
Apple, seems to be able to put squeeze on the competitor exactly because it
can leverage having large share of (advertising) market against Apple's medium
share of (consumer electronics) market.

------
panarky
There's no big mystery here.

If Google didn't build Android, the giants who control the platform could
charge extortionate fees to let Google play.

Same reason that Google buys spectrum, builds a browser, creates a TV set-top
box, trades electricity wholesale, and builds municipal Wi-Fi and fiber
networks.

Google must do these things or other corporate behemoths will control their
destiny.

------
goodscreens
Google isn't completely neglecting the app store, but the Android App Market
is not as important to their revenue model as iTunes is for Apple.

What's clearly in Google's interest is for people to discover mobile content
through Google search.

------
cincinnatus
Amusing to think that Apple was criticized as being a "vertically integrated
advertising agency" and Google really is one.

Of course they want to increase eyeball traffic and ad impressions. It is also
very clear to me that Android will be the most widely used mobile OS at the
bottom end of the price structure, and therefor in the direct-revenue-per-
subscriber numbers. So it makes sense that the apps that will do best there
will be ad supported.

The experience of the Angry Birds developers bear this out already.

------
ergo98
I see little that is unique or insightful in this essay.

"Google builds services like Google Maps, Gmail and Docs and gives them away
for free"...

...because they entered a market where maps, email, and "docs" were free.
Google didn't blaze a trail of free services, but they were bound to continue
it.

Nonetheless, they've managed to get lots of businesses to subscribe to the pay
services though.

"This is important for Google because while Google isn’t licensing Android"

Aside from the fact that while the core Android image -- which is GPLd btw --
is free, Google's premium applications are not. Note that many low end devices
don't have Google's applications. Google is also trying to monetize their
leading edge advantage with the Nexus One originally, and now the Nexus S.

"And Google conveniently owns one of the largest mobile advertising providers,
Admob. "

Yeah, so does Apple. How do you like them Apples? Apple is very heavily
invested and involved in the advertising and the media sales market. Any
illusion that Apple is a pure player just trying to honestly sell an
electronic device and that's the conclusion of the transaction should be
demolished the moment you hook it up to iTunes. The original purchase is
merely the first of many monetizations of the customer.

"Google is building Android not so they can make great mobile devices"

Oh well if you say so.

"For example, Android’s market may not be terrible in comparison to Apple’s
App Store for paid applications just because Google hasn’t yet finished it;
rather, discouraging paid applications on the Android platform is in Google’s
interest. "

Conspiracy theory. Google is simply _really bad_ at some things. See Google
Checkout -- which was actually a major contributor to the Market's problems --
and Google's retail efforts with the Nexus One. The Android Market is not
great, but neither is it particularly terrible, and it has been rapidly
improving.

"This would squeeze out space for Apple in the mass market, forcing them into
the high-end of the market, where people are willing to pay higher prices for
a better device and experience."

This is my favorite bit. Apple is a mass consumer electronics company, with
products at every price point, usually representing the value option. This
sort of casual allusion that it is the premium option is utter bunk, and
instantly reveals the bias of the speaker. If Android succeeds, via
competition, in putting price pressure on smartphones, you can be __certain
__that Apple will be pushing down to the lower options just as quickly. Anyone
who thinks otherwise has absolutely no business sense.

Android is really a story about Linux. When people miss the Linux part of the
equation -- and the decisions that are bound by it -- they instantly lose
focus on some of the givens of the platform.

~~~
blub
I don't think that you are right at all.

First you said that Google just continued with free services. This is
incorrect: Navigation was not free and they severely crippled the paid
navigation market.

Quality e-mail was not free. A quality office suite was not free. And it still
isn't, because Google has failed so far to provide an alternative to MS
Office, but they're trying alright!

I do applaud initiatives of transparency such as publishing takedown requests,
but income sources are a very powerful influence in a company. Decisions that
benefit ads income surely get a priority boost or better funding. I'm not
saying that Google is evil or good - this is simplistic and stupid - but a
corporation is a corporation.

I don't use Apple products, and I don't care much what Apple does, but at
least they're not hypocrites and admit that they want your money. On the other
hand Google is all "free" and "open" according to their corporate talk.
Speaking of Apple, they ARE a premium brand. You're probably wealthy enough
not to care that you pay 2000EUR on a laptop, but most people can't afford to
do that.

Finally, Android is a story about the Linux kernel with a Java user space on
top. Lots of products have Linux kernels, I don't see why it's such a big
deal.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
> A quality office suite was not free.

I'm holding my nose as I type this, but for the vast majority of non-power
users, OpenOffice is more than adequate.

~~~
blub
It is adequate. If I had to pay the full price for Office I probably wouldn't
get it, but through BizSpark I was able to get it for free and OO just can't
compete. Additonally, MS offers healthy discounts for home versions, students
and so on, most of the time you don't have to pay the full price.

My parents use OO though.

------
isopod
FTA:

 _This helps explain Google’s motivation for Android. Google could, of course,
just extend their search advertising to mobile phones, Adsense for mobile
devices and build mobile versions of their web applications so anyone can use
them. That might make for a fine business, but it’d also be a rather weak
position to be in compared to where Google is now. Phone makers could change
the default search engine on their phones to something other than Google;
mobile devices might change how people find information—they might switch away
entirely from using a search engine, and in that case, Google would be dead in
the water; or, worse, perhaps mobile devices could move people away from using
advertising-supported web applications, and toward primarily using paid-for
applications; in that case, Google would really be screwed._

\---

The thing is, Bing is already the default search on many phones, including
Android/Droid phones on Verizon, who is ostensibly Google's partner.

~~~
code_duck
Is it? My Verizon Droid phone came with Google as the browser's homepage. I
haven't seen Bing once.

~~~
sandipc
As far as I know, Bing is the default on the Samsung Fascinate (Galaxy S) on
Verizon, but not any other Verizon Android phones. And certainly not on the
"Droid" series (which is distinct from Verizon's other Android offerings)...

