

Baidu forks Android to introduce its own mobile OS for China - ashishgandhi
http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/09/02/baidu-yi-mobile-os/

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imrehg
And the Apache license means that we definitely won't get to look at the
source code and any Chinese built in backdoors / trojans / other expected
"goodness". Or should I give them the benefit of the doubt? I think that boat
has sailed.

~~~
grandalf
Do you really think there aren't backdoors in US made phones?

~~~
imrehg
I think I can trust more the CyanogenMod that I'm running on my HTC phone than
anything coming from a Chinese closed-source firm.

~~~
vetinari
I don't want to spoil your day, but do you realize that you have no idea, what
runs on the broadband core of your HTC (Samsung, Motorola, whatever) phone?
That's the core that boots first and then loads SPL on your application
processor.

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chucknthem
Is this much different from what MIUI (Xiao Mi) did with their android ROM,
they replaced a lot of the default android services as well? They're also
releasing an android phone soon [1]

Any distrust of chinese technology aside, I'm actually really looking forward
to what this OS will be like. imo MIUI is the most usable android ROM around,
and it's much more stable than cyanogen. It proved to me that Chinese startups
are capable of producing really awesome products.

iPhone currently has the biggest smart phone market share in China by far,
this looks like the beginnings of Android taking over China like it did the
rest of the english world.

~~~
dongsheng
I reckon it's not fair to compare Xiao Mi with Baidu, baidu is an evil company
with evil history, they sort the search results based on how much clients
would like to pay, similar with AdSense, but the ad supported results are
blended with normal search results without indication. A year back they even
publish fake medicines in search results.

This is one of the story:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2011/08/16/baidu-
slid...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2011/08/16/baidu-slides-after-
china-tv-finds-ads-for-fake-meds/)

Baidu no longer a startup company, they control the search engine market in
china, ordinary people don't have the concept of search engine, baidu it is...

~~~
ma2rten
I don't think that evil at all. I think people use that word way to fast.
Killing people is evil. Lieing is evil. As long as they are open about it,
which they seem to be, I think it's perfectly okay. Maybe if someone is
willing to pay, that's often even a better indication of relevance then some
random metric on links.

I also think there was also a study about Google, which found that many people
can not tell apart ads and normal results.

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scottchin
And now it sounds like Baidu will be partnering with Dell to make tablets and
mobile handsets.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/06/us-dell-baidu-
idUS...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/06/us-dell-baidu-
idUSTRE7850C820110906)

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greggman
It's my understanding this is really hurting android in China.

Well, hurting is the wrong word. Android phones are selling great but no
central market and no standard OS means Chinese app devs are finding it really
hard make any popular apps because they have to target effectively different
OSes and multiple markets ( > 20 IIRC)

That means Chinese users aren't getting many apps. Might as well be a 2006
smart phone. I suppose a few versions and markets will eventually dominate so
maybe it's just growing pains.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Are you sure?. It's just I've read so many people who desperately _wanted_
this to be a problem for Android, usually with little to no evidence (or
understanding of open source). Often this was reflected in dubious claims that
Android's suprising sales surge was largely the OMS fork on low-end phones for
developing nations and that real people weren't actually buying high-end HTC,
Samsung or Motorola handsets. Actual figures show this to be wishful thinking
on their part.

Even if you accept that it is hurting Android, you have to compare it to the
alternative, which is a rival pushing an OS that isn't 99% the same as yours.
If anything Google (as a web company) is probably giddy about a fragmented
smartphone market that is united (even across to Bada and iPhone) by webkit-
based browsers.

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krosaen
I'm not sure if "forks" is the right word, aren't they just another OEM adding
their own skin ala HTC sense or Motoblur?

~~~
icegreentea
Well, the details are lacking a bit, but at the very least they're going a bit
further than most other OEMs by stripping out all of the Google goodness (and
I presume the Android Marketplace) and replacing with their own (and thus
avoiding the google licensing fees... and avoiding using a competitor's main
product).

~~~
ashishgandhi
I think they even are replacing the Maps service not just Google Search. Just
to mention this explicitly.

~~~
chucknthem
The maps app is blocked/isn't available in China, so it makes sense to replace
it here.

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scottchin
Here's Baidu's official website for the OS. <http://yi.baidu.com/>

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wisty
Hasn't this been going on for about 12 months?

Android has been blocked for a long time in China, and everything came from
some fork. Maybe this is a new fork?

~~~
chucknthem
I'm in China now and see Android phones on sale. A lot of google services are
blocked, youtube, plus, the maps app, and others, but Android is alive and
well.

~~~
wisty
developer.android.com was blocked in China.

That didn't stop companies making the phones and installing the OS (through a
third party or with special permission, or most likely through a proxy). There
was some fork in Chinese, which could be accessed.

Also, I think the App store was blocked, and a Chinese App store set up
instead.

~~~
chucknthem
When was this? I'm able to visit developer.android.com fine here...even go to
my android market publisher profile to publish apps.

~~~
wisty
There's google groups posts about this dating from 24 months ago.

Also, python.org/downloads was also blocked (but not the rest of python.org).
If you go to python.org now, there's a page labeled "Downloads" in Chinese for
Chinese downloads which is _not_ blocked. I guess it's easier to create a
mirror than lobby to get a page removed from the banned list. It's weird
though.

I think there was some Chinese version of android.com, but I don't know how
close to the original it was.

