
”No one at Google is Returning Our Calls” - antr
http://digitstodollars.com/2013/12/27/no-one-at-google-is-returning-our-calls/
======
pavlov
Android is more and more like the mobile equivalent of desktop Windows. Now
they have the huge pirate market in China too.

When this happened to Microsoft, certain strategy-oriented parts of the
company were happy to see Windows spread everywhere as quickly as possible and
deal with piracy later, whereas others were more concerned with the bottom
line and how to extract revenue immediately. Google will have to deal with the
same political questions.

It's funny how Android even has its own versions of OS/2 in the form of
BlackBerry 10 and Jolla's Sailfish -- that is, competing operating systems
that proclaim to be technically more advanced while offering reasonable app-
level compatibility with the dominant system. (I suspect that BB10 and
Sailfish will share OS/2's fate in a few years. Too little user benefit
against the high cost of lacking access to the dominant vendor's services.)

~~~
RexRollman
Its worst than that. A least with Windows on PC clones, you have control over
the hardware and can update to your hearts content. Android makers often
change the interface and can interfere with you from getting updates.

~~~
pavlov
That's probably something that the PC clone vendors of the early Windows era
(1990-95) would have loved to do, but they just didn't have the software
competence.

Developing a new shell for Windows was technically possible, but must have
seemed like an outlandish prospect to companies like Compaq or Dell. ("Where
are we going to hire a bunch of C developers who know GUIs and can do a better
job at this than Microsoft? Forget about it.")

Some companies did go there -- for instance, HP had an advanced Windows shell
called NewWave [0], but I don't think they ever built PCs specifically for it.

Today, the situation is very different. The executives at any old phone maker
will look at Android and say: "That's just Java, isn't it? We have plenty of
people who know Java. Hell, there's a school down the road where they train
100 Java developers every year. Let's do it! We can be a software company too,
just like Apple!"

And of course we know how _that_ turns out. But it will take a long time until
the executives at all those LGs and HTCs will recognize that their
organization sucks at software, because it's not a software organization at
its core. (Nokia spent tens of billions of dollars on Symbian and MeeGo until
they finally got this lesson, and they ended up selling the phones to a
software company.)

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_NewWave](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_NewWave)

~~~
tanzam75
Isn't Microsoft also more restrictive when it comes to what parts of Windows
OEMs are allowed to customize?

It's one thing to swap out PROGMAN.EXE, as HP did with NewWave. But you're not
allowed to interfere with the ability to run Windows Update.

~~~
tadfisher
That's just the bargain Google struck with carriers and OEMs. They have the
reins on Google services, but allowing OS customization was a concession to
get third parties to adopt Android as the de facto iOS competitor. And OEMs
and carriers love to push their own customizations to build revenue streams.

------
bane
The solution of course is for Google to charge a small fee, say $50k/yr to
each OEM who wants to use Android on their devices (if the OEM can't handle
that fee, then they have no hope of handling the huge manufacturing, support,
carrier fees and other costs involved with launching a product).

This fee will guarantee them a warm body with a heartbeat on the other end of
a dedicated number who will be their "relationship manager" who can run things
down internally and manage bringing new OEMs on.

In reality, the RM would probably service 4-5 "accounts" at a time and these 4
accounts or OEMs would completely cover the cost of this employee or

Of course having 20 or 30 RMs banging against the Android team to get info and
support OEMs doesn't scale, so for every 3 or 4 RMs you hire additional staff
on the Android dev side to handle that relationship. And _that_ does scale.

It's not a money maker for Google, but it covers support costs without turning
support to OEMs into a cost center.

~~~
jessaustin
This would certainly be a solution for OEMs in this situation, but I wonder
how much of G would even consider this a problem? Another way to ask this: how
long will G neglect the needs of this market before we conclude that G doesn't
consider this a market worth noticing?

It seems possible that a third party could provide many of the services OEMs
require, but I suspect that organization would need to be either very skilled
or somewhat well-connected to the relevant dev groups at G, or else it would
find itself in this same exact situation.

------
Zigurd
How did Microsoft manage a zillion OEMs who had to have audited numbers and
get invoiced, and Google can't manage a simple compatibility test and license
agreement?

Never mind third tier phone OEMs, this is really hurting Google in tablets,
where you don't need carrier retail channels.

~~~
adventured
Microsoft - Bill Gates - from day one believed they were in the business of
selling a product to a customer, providing support to that customer, and they
wanted that customer to stay with them forever. For the first 15+ years of
Microsoft's existence, they had no monopoly position, and had to always be
hustling for customers.

Google being a search engine, from day one never had to nor intended to
provide support to any users. By dominating search usage (they owned search by
what, five years in?), it guaranteed they'd own the search ad business by
default (and of course they hooked up an excellent approach courtesy of
goto.com), with that combination in place there would never be market
incentive to provide good customer service to their ad customers and partners
(and once that behavior was encoded into the company's DNA, they approached
everything a similar way).

Sometimes Google seems more like a hobby farm (that happens to have a golden
goose) than a properly run business.

~~~
PaulHoule
Nobody at Google returns any calls from anybody, it's a core part of their
DNA.

~~~
wpietri
If only there were a term for being so impressed with yourselves that you felt
you could just ignore the little people. Maybe "focused on Q1 revenue goals"?
Seems long, though. I'd be happy if I could get it down to three syllables.

~~~
munificent
> If only there were a term for being so impressed with yourselves that you
> felt you could just ignore the little people.

It nothing to do with people being "little" in Google's eyes. It's about them
being _numerous_. According to Wikipedia, Google has 46,421 employees. Here's
the reported number of users of various Google products normalized to "per
Googler":

    
    
        Gmail:    9,155
        Drive:      215
        Chrome:  16,156
        Maps:     4,308
        G+:       6,462
        Android: 19,387 activations (18 per day)
        Docs:       107 businesses
    

Imagine you had your own B2B business. Just you, no other employees. You have
107 businesses using your product. How much time would you be able to give
each of them?

Say you open up a little hand-crafted artisanal phone business. Just you.
You've sold 19,387 phones in the past few years, and you sell 18 more every
day. How much time would you have for support for each of those?

You make software. Just a little hobby on the side you do by yourself. You
have more than 32,296 active users of it. You're still cranking away on it,
adding new features. How much time do you also have to answer the phone when
one of those people has a problem? Keep in mind, none of them have paid you
anything.

Let's say Google decided to drop _everything_ : no development, no new
features, no new products, no vacation, no HR, no facilities, no security, no
R&D, no training, no nothing. Instead, every single employee from Larry Page
on down devotes their full time to tech support. Users are pretty sharp so
they rarely have problems: they only need to call for help once per year. If
all every Googler did was get on the phone and help people, they'd still only
be able to give each person 4.82 minutes.

~~~
dragonwriter
What if Google spent some of the billions of dollars in cash it is sitting on
and accumulating hiring a support workforce?

~~~
catnaroek
How would such an "investment" increase Google's bottom line? Are you sure it
would not be a mere expense?

------
sounds
That was unexpected. Why would Google be so ignorant of Android China? China
seems like such an obvious part of the mobile big picture that I can only
assume "big" things.

In no particular order:

• Google's decision to leave China [1]

• Political interference to protect a Chinese mobile OS [2]

• Some sort of license restriction that doesn't effect Google services over
the web but kicks in for mobile (completely a wild guess here)

• Political interference to keep Samsung out (so implausible I don't even
believe it, but for the sake of discussion...) [3]

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/01/furious-google-
th...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/01/furious-google-throws-down-
gauntlet-to-china-over-censorship/)

[2] maybe [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/08/28/why-htc-is-making-
a-m...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/08/28/why-htc-is-making-a-mobile-
operating-system/)

[3]
[http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prCN24344613](http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prCN24344613)

~~~
leoc
Other ideas (all pure speculation):

* A desire to protect Google's relationship with the big-name phone manufacturers: maybe the big players have hinted that Google getting too helpful to the small Chinese firms would tend to cool them on Android

* Concern that the Chinese manufacturers might accept Google's technical help, then refuse to implement all of the G-suite or otherwise violate the terms of the certification. With Google's weakened position in China it might not be able to get effective redress

* A specific form of the above: concern that Chinese-brand phones will contain trapdoors to allow clandestine Chinese government access to your Gmail etc. Google can't prevent this from happening on Chinese phones with "unofficial" G-suite access, but at least it can disclaim responsibility, never having certified the device

~~~
mcguire
* A perennial inability to support paying customers.

Don't attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity.

------
alextingle
It's not just them. Google doesn't talk to anybody.

~~~
jaggederest
Apart from Matt Cutts responding personally on HN, people trying desperately
to sell you Adwords, and press releases; they may as well be a black hole.

~~~
snowbunny
Another option is to post a ranting and crying video to Youtube to get special
treatment.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs)
(Warning: Strong language)

~~~
dasil003
Wait... did that work?

~~~
sentenza
Since the name of the channel she is talking about in the video is different
from the channel the video is on, probably not.

------
apunic
Slighlty OT: Anybody knows why installing an OS on mobile hardware cannot be
just like installing Windows in the old days? First installing the base system
and then drivers for 'non-standard' hardware components. Why do need hardware
manufacturers and OS vendors to talk?

Getting the G-Suite seems to be a problem now but there are already some
alternatives for each of the G-Suite's apps and I'd welcome any newcomer to
this stage-so I wouldn't consider the G-Suite as the main problem with
Android.

~~~
qwerta
It is possible. For example Ubuntu is installable on some phones.

It is like Linux 15 years ago, there are a few good drivers and one has to
check compatibility charts.

Other problem is hardware detection. OS on PC can detect what hardware is
installed. On mobile you need hardware map. There is no way to have universal
installer for all mobile phones.

~~~
venomsnake
Why do you _need_ the map, except - it was the way it has always been done in
mobile?

~~~
vetinari
There is no plug-and-play, you need to know if the hardware is there or not.
If you poke something and you are on the wrong board, if could
free/reboot/brick/whatever.

It is an ARM thing. The good news is, that there is a map and a single kernel
can run on multiple boards. It is a recent development, before that, you
needed a separately built kernel.

------
pistle
Let's prioritize... Help out a large OEM with some level of gravitas and
reliability or 10's to 100's of bargain-bin-targeting mom & pop shops that are
unwilling to put their balls on the line to get up to speed on making
globally-commercial products. Then you have the morass of cheap China tainting
your platform. Google loves Samsung because they understand, slightly, how to
balance silly, shiny shit with passable hardware. Imagine the backlash when
millions of consumers think "terrible piece of crap" when someone says,
"Google-compliant, Android-based device."

AND THEN those same OEM's will come back and tar Google (again) for their
failures. I wouldn't rush out to prop up everybody with a cousin that knows a
bad batch parts fence in Shenzen. Let the creme rise to the top first.

~~~
d2dadvisory
So I wrote the original post, and I'm always a bit afraid to wade into the
comments, but I wanted to respond to this one.

Your point is that Google is prioritizing correctly. That they are just going
after the big OEMs first and then the guys I'm talking about are too small to
bother with. About right?

I didn't hammer the point in this post, because I've made it a few other
places, but all of these OEMs collectively are bigger than any other single
OEM. Collectively, this group produces between one half and two thirds of the
world's phones. Most are very small, but many are now huge. Google seems to be
focussing on just one or two. I think with a small amount of effort they could
tap into the whole audience. It wouldn't require building a huge support
structure. And the numbers are huge.

~~~
pistle
Thanks for the wading and additional, nuance-providing details. It would still
seem that they would first focus on a single tier of support focusing around
their favorite few largest OEMs to set the guide for the others. I'm not
saying top 20% of devices, but something along the lines of focusing on the an
80-20 principal. Then, if you see a star being born that will disrupt your top
picks, bring them in. Market dominance can be sustained that way. Those OEMs
aren't going to be making iOS or Lumias. "It's not nice, it's Google." (TM)

------
justincormack
Can anyone explain how I can just install the G-suite on Cyanogenmod then? Is
it blessed by Google? Or does it recognise that my phone is appropriately
blessed via the bootloader?

~~~
snowbunny
It's not blessed by Google. In fact they sent a C&D to CM over it.

[http://gizmodo.com/5367420/google-threatens-cyanogen-
android...](http://gizmodo.com/5367420/google-threatens-cyanogen-android-
hacker-with-cease+and+desist)

The site(s) you're downloading it from are committing copyright violations and
are subject to a DMCA takedown.

~~~
SEMW
> The site(s) you're downloading it from are committing copyright violations
> and are subject to a DMCA takedown.

Yes, that is technically true. But in practice, it's not like Google just
haven't noticed yet and are likely to take them down any day now: the current
situation (cyanogenmod ships without gapps, but google won't prevent goo.im
hosting them or cyanogenmod linking to goo.im) was worked out in 2009 after
that C&D, and Google seems to have been fine with it for the last 4 years -
they even let goo.im have an app in the play store - even if, officially, they
still reserve their right to assert their copyright in the future.

(The wording of the license for gapps now specifies that the licence is scoped
to the device[1], so an end-user who installs gapps (e.g. from goo.im) on
cyanogenmod is not committing copyright infringement if their phone came with
gapps (i.e. not kindles etc.))

[1] "..licensed to handset manufacturers shipping devices",
[http://source.android.com/faqs.html](http://source.android.com/faqs.html)

------
ABS
this "Google offers the Android codebase for free download, but this is only
part of the software needed to make a phone viable"

is simply false. You have everything needed for a "phone" and even for a
"smartphone", you simply miss google services that might (West in particular)
or might not (East in particular) be perceived as a must have by consumer.

See for example all the android-based phone that ship with alternative
markets, maps and similar services.

~~~
Zigurd
Nobody, not even Oppo with their CyanogenMod-based Android, is selling an
Android product in developed-world markets without Google Play and the rest of
Google's app suite.

The real alternative is expensive: Build your own ecosystem, as Amazon has.

~~~
richardwhiuk
You seem to have come up with the refutation to your claim, but then ignored
it anyway. The Kindle Fire [1] does run Android and does not have the Play
Store - it has the Amazon app store instead.

1:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindle_Fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindle_Fire)

~~~
guelo
He said "The real alternative is expensive: Build your own ecosystem, as
Amazon has."

------
angryasian
I feel like this author just doesn't know what he's talking about and is just
ranting on google because AOSP != google experience. He makes no mention of
Open Handset Alliance
[http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/](http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/).
This would be the first place to start.

~~~
d2dadvisory
I'm the author. And I do know what I'm talking about. OHA doesn't even begin
to solve the problem at hand. The subjects of my piece have access to AOSP,
and could join OHA if they wanted to, but the fact is that those are not
enough to support their products. These OEMs sell into incredibly competitive
environments, and many of their customers want the full Google Experience and
G-Suite. They'd be willing to pay something for it. My argument is just that
it is in Google's best interests to become more engaged with this community.
Nothing to do with how I feel about AOSP.

------
schenecstasy
Weird, they're taking RapGenius's calls:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6964169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6964169)

------
zavi
Author didn't say specifically what kind of requests Google didn't respond to.
It could easily be the case that given EOM's device isn't good enough to pass
Compatibility Test, and instead of fixing the issue EOM would contact Google
saying "our phone doesnt really need this feature that your test requires, but
you still give us keys to GSuite." Of course Google won't respond to such
inquiry.

------
drcube
Why not offer a link to the Gapps download with instructions for installing
them like CyanogenMod does? It wouldn't be that hard to streamline this for
novices on first booting their phone and therefore bypass Google's
bureaucracy.

------
reustle
A thought. Is Google interested in seeing more android devices sold, or more
nexus android devices sold?

