
Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary - 0xbxd
http://arstechnica.com/?p=339141
======
DannyBee
"Google was terrified that Apple would end up ruling the mobile space. So, to
help in the fight against the iPhone at a time when Google had no mobile
foothold whatsoever, Android was launched as an open source project."

This is not a quote from anyone because it's false. Andy started Android
_well_ before anyone knew iPhone existed (years). I say existed only because I
don't know offhand when Apple started iPhone internally, so i can't say for
sure he started it before Apple did, but i suspect that's true as well.

Andy left Danger in 2003 to go start to create Android. The first iPhone was
not released until mid-2007.

Google was terrified, but it was terrified the _carriers_ would end up owning
the mobile space, because they already were.

Andy also didn't open source Android to "get a foothold in something".

He's literally said his reasons before.

Given how poorly researched just this simple paragraph is (it literally can't
be true), it would take a lot of time to point out how bad the rest is too.

~~~
close04
Actually that's mostly true. Rubin's open source Android didn't have to stay
open source. But there was no choice, unlike Apple Google didn't plan on
making the phone. So they had to have a lot of partnerships with OEMs and
carriers.

And as Google was trying to sell that phone (with keyboard and no touchscreen)
and OS to carriers Apple launched the iPhone. At this point Rubin and Google
changed course and made their phone and OS less Blackberry and more iPhone
because they were smart enough to realize that was the future.

The _only_ way to make it work, to convince carriers and fight Apple, was to
keep it open source. Or to sign it away to the carriers :).

Rubin himself said that the iPhone was the thing that made them reconsider
their entire strategy and come up with the first Android phone as we know it.

If you're curious about the story there's a good book with all the behind the
curtain details: _Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a
Revolution_.

~~~
DannyBee
"The only way to make it work, to convince carriers and fight Apple, was to
keep it open source. Or to sign it away to the carriers :)."

Again, it's simply not. You are confusing having access to source with being
open source. The partner were happy with closed source.

They did care somewhat that they had source. They definitely did not care if
anyone else did, and didn't want anyone else to.

"If you're curious about the story there's a good book with all the behind the
curtain details: Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a
Revolution."

I literally was in the room, so i don't need the book :)

~~~
close04
Take it up with Rubin. He seems to have had a different understanding. And he
was the one negotiating with carriers for a long time.

And while I wasn't "in the room", Rubin said it himself in multiple
interviews: he wanted to make an _open source_ OS, not _with access to source_
in order to appeal to exactly what the carriers wanted.

In fact every time Rubin talked about this he referred to Android as it was
since its phone OS inception as _open_. It's always "his idea to create an
open source OS for phones".

I'll just assume that one of you is embellishing his story. And in all honesty
it could be either way, founder stories tend to get beautified over time.

~~~
tptacek
You're not even rebutting him. He didn't say Rubin didn't want Android to be
open source. He said Rubin's reasons for supporting open source were not the
ones people attribute to him; that open sourcing Android had nothing to do
with penetration among hardware vendors, who _did not want Android to be open
source_.

------
HillaryBriss
Before I read this article, I was unaware of the struggles of Skyhook vis a
vis Google's own geolocation service.

Google really, really, really disliked the idea of an OEM installing Skyhook
and setting it as the default location service on their devices.

Ultimately, Skyhook sued and won a settlement from Google. IMHO, pretty ugly
behavior from Google.

[https://www.engadget.com/2011/05/10/internal-emails-
reveal-g...](https://www.engadget.com/2011/05/10/internal-emails-reveal-
googles-desperation-over-skyhooks-andro/)

[https://www.geek.com/mobile/google-emails-reveal-anti-
compet...](https://www.geek.com/mobile/google-emails-reveal-anti-competitive-
moves-against-skyhook-1376609/)

More interestingly Google internally recognized that Skyhook's ability to
locate the user's device may have been superior when Google's Steve Lee wrote,
in an internal Google email:

 _Skyhook 's accuracy is better than ours_

[http://www.businessinsider.com/google-skyhook-
emails-2011-5#...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-skyhook-
emails-2011-5#heres-the-email-that-started-it-all-subject-line-can-you-
explain-whyhow-this-happened-googles-vic-gundotra-links-to-our-post-about-
motorola-ditching-googles-location-service-for-skyhooks-and-wants-to-know-
why-1)

------
myrandomcomment
Funny story. I loved smart phones. From the first Palm with cell access to the
Treo 270 and 650. I bought the first iPhone and then spent tons of time in IRC
working out with a large group how to unlock it as my company paid for
T-mobile, not ATT. I loved my iPhone and had a few. At some point I bought a
Galaxy Note. I loved the HW, but hated the OS. Did the whole custom ROM etc,
but it was just never as clean as IOS. About this time I was at a small party
at a friends who used to work at Google. There was the normal crowd of techies
from most of the major players in the valley. I was talking to a few friends
about how much I disliked the Android experience. There was this guy there
that I did not know. He starts asking tons of question zeroing in on why I
disliked Android, which came down to the lack of interface guidelines between
apps and the like. This Q&A went on for like 30 minutes. At the end I asked
him, “why do you care so much?” He said “Sorry, we have not been introduced, I
am Andy and I run Android at Google.” The thing that impressed me very much
was the depth and detail of the question and his understanding of what my
issue was. He said at the end “you are right, we can do better”. Nice guy.

------
vatueil
Could we add "(2013)" to the HN title? Article is a re-post from 5 years ago.
Original discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6582494](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6582494)

------
kemonocode
Project Fuchsia is clearly their attempt at rectifying the mess they had with
Android. No pesky GPLv2 licensing with the Linux kernel getting in the way, no
ambiguity with Oracle... an OS completely owned by them.

Sure, it _might_ be OSS as well, but in the end, they'll be the ones to call
the shots, and sure enough they won't include any of the secret sauce.
Hopefully also for good by forcing providers and manufacturers to give some
reasonable support to their phones and not be lazy with security patches, or
better yet, completely lifting that kind of "responsibilities" off them.

------
TwoNineA
Clickbait, sensationalist. Counterpoint: Amazon FireOS.

~~~
close04
Counterpoint: Because of FireOS (not a "Google approved" Android fork) Amazon
is no longer allowed to license any Google apps. As hinted by them missing
from the OHA members list:
[http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/oha_members.html](http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/oha_members.html)

How many phone companies can afford to do this?

Imagine a different scenario with a company you may not have a strong positive
bias towards: Microsoft. Imagine all the OEM agreements are: "if you want to
sell laptops with Windows you must agree to never sell laptops with other
OSes". Or "if your software runs on any competing OS you are no longer allowed
access to some proprietary and critical Windows API".

What many people refuse to understand is one simple fact: what Google did is
illegal. And it's only their personal pro-Google bias that makes them ignore
and excuse the behavior. Or even to claim that the law should change for them.
The fact that so few people were outraged when Microsoft landed in the same
hot water is irrefutable proof of this.

~~~
cageface
The same people that dismiss Android as excessively fragmented will also cheer
the recent decision to punish them for trying to reign in that fragmentation.
The mobile market is healthy right now, with meaningful choice and competition
that has benefitted consumers on both leading platforms. Hopefully that will
still be the case after this recent misguided attack by the EC.

There was no meaningful competition in the OS space when Microsoft was fined.

~~~
close04
Microsoft was fined in 2009 for bundling IE with Windows. At the time IE
had... 65.5% market share. Today's Google market share is larger than that in
basically every segment that counts.

~~~
cageface
At that time Microsoft had almost complete dominance of the operating system
market, at 93%, which is the point. There was nothing like the counterpart to
it that iOS is to Android today.

Android may look like it's similarly dominant but in the most valuable markets
it's way closer to parity and if you exclude the cheap low end devices it's
actually a minority. Apple isn't raking in 85% of the profits in mobile for
nothing.

Be careful what you wish for. A lot of improvements in iOS in recent years
were inspired by Android.

~~~
close04
At this time Android has 87% market share. And climbing.

The only thing I wish for is for none of these companies to be allowed to get
the entire pie. Those improvements you talk about? They were done during a
fight when they were more or less tied with the opponent. The closer you are
to 100% market share, the fewer and far between they are. You want proof? Look
at MS, or Intel. The moment they got dominance they coasted on it for years
with no tangible improvement to anything else but their bottom line.

And you seem to think that I must be an iOS fan and probably hate Google. My
main phone is Android and has been for 7 years now (although I tend to own and
use one of each Windows, iOS, BB10). That's exactly why I want to see more
free competition.

P.S. Google deals in user data, not selling phones. So a valuable market is
one that gives them access to that data. One with lots of users. The phone
they use is irrelevant.

~~~
cageface
It’s 55% in the US, 32% in Japan, and only 75% in Europe. It doesn’t make any
sense to pretend that an iPhone and a low end Chinese burner phone are even
remotely in the same category of device. And in other markets Apple only has a
minority share because they’d rather protect their unprecedented profit
margins than sell something those people can afford.

Those are the most valuable markets and even in those markets startups and
developers target iOS first. If you kneecap Android you’re just putting Apple
even more in the driver seat than they are today.

I still haven’t heard anyone explain how they think this recent ruling makes
anything better. Who is going to benefit from this?

~~~
close04
I'm sorry but I don't think you understand where Google's position is here and
where the revenue is coming from. Here's a primer:
[https://arkenea.com/blog/big-tech-companies-user-
worth/](https://arkenea.com/blog/big-tech-companies-user-worth/)

Notice how conspicuously absent is the price of the phone or the number of
apps you choose to buy.

It's not just Android, it's also the Google apps that come with it (you know,
the ones that an OEM loses access to if it tries to compete).

And the revenue is not a percentage from every expensive phone you buy in the
US. It's the user data that phone, cheap or expensive, gives them access to.
So as long as the phone is able to provide data about your location, browsing
habits, emails, music preference, searches, etc. Google will never care if
it's a cheap one.

Why do you think Google complies with every request it gets from the
government of one of its biggest markets that you forgot to mention, China?
Because access to that trove of user data is almost priceless. Why do you
think the likes of Facebook want to give free internet in Africa? For a Nobel
prize? No, it's because that's paving the way to accessing more user data.

> I still haven’t heard anyone explain how they think this recent ruling makes
> anything better. Who is going to benefit from this?

The customers. I see you are commenting a lot but probably didn't bother to
read the article linked here on HN. You are asking questions that have very
logical answers available everywhere you look, even in real life. Which makes
me believe you're not actually trying to get an answer, you're suggesting that
competition law is wrong. Possibly just when some companies have to suffer.

~~~
scarface74
_And the revenue is not a percentage from every expensive phone you buy in the
US. It 's the user data that phone, cheap or expensive, gives them access to.
So as long as the phone is able to provide data about your location, browsing
habits, emails, music preference, searches, etc. Google will never care if
it's a cheap one._

This is why I don’t understand how computer geeks can prefer Android over iOS.
I understand not everyone can afford iOS products, but for the people who both
know Google’s business model and can afford it, why wouldn’t someone prefer
the simple transaction that Apple offers - you give them money and they give
you stuff.

------
baybal2
A lot of Chinese no name phones come with 2.* era Android exactly because of
that. Google provides no workable lawsuit threat free userspace apps for later
versions of android.

I think they just began to feel what a big impediment it will be for them in
the future. 2.* android is what IE6 was to Windows.

A lot of app authors still intentionally target 2.* era APIs because they
clientele lives in countries where "Chindroid" is dominant.

------
exabrial
I find this sort of delusionary. Look what China has done with Android

------
throw2016
The entire ecosystem of Google and Arm are not open in any way, it's a one
sided relationship and this kind of fake open source makes a mockery of the
open source movement and the extraordinary value Google, Facebook and rest of
the ecosystem have got from open source.

The apologists and hand wavers do a disservice to good faith discussion on
open source and are more interested in moats, which is a legitimate objective
but then build your own moat. Don't posture about being open. That's just
corrupt.

Here is a quick test of value. Will Linux be affected in the slightest if
Google dropped Android and moved to Fuschia today? It will not even be
noticed.

Same with Google's use of Linux in the rest of their infrastructure. Will
Linux be affected in the slightest if Google stops using Linux? Again no.

So Google is actually benefiting hugely from Linux and adding little to no
value back. Open source licenses need to learn from this to prevent their
abuse. Even better a new clause which forbids the use of open source for
surveillance and stalking is sorely needed. Or if this is the result people
will simply not be motivated to contribute.

