
Why Google Did Android - zdw
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/02/09/Why-Android
======
auiya
Was at Google in 2007 when the launch(es) were happening. The commenter at the
bottom of the article is correct, the existential threat Google faced wasn't
from Apple, it was from US mobile carriers. Google wanted leverage over the
carriers to bring Google products to feature phones more easily. They had no
intention of actually releasing Android at the time, and it wasn't close to
being ready for release anyway. Apple then released iPhone and beat Google to
the punch, and I remember us all thinking "oh shit this is WAY better than the
janky, blackberry-esque prototypes we have in development"[1]. So everyone at
Google scrambled to get something out the door in response, and the compromise
was the HTC G1/Dream on the cheapest carrier at the time (T-mobile). I was
using a Nokia N95 at the time, and while the Dream was laughably bad, I did
appreciate the bits of the Dream which compared favorably, like mobile web
browsing and application development. I still feel Android is mostly a
reactive product with many clumsy holdovers from v1, but I digress.

[1]
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/HT...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/HTC_HT722G700375_20080211.jpg/200px-
HTC_HT722G700375_20080211.jpg)

~~~
dehrmann
> laughably bad

While not Dream-bad, the first iPhone was really bad, but with a better
interface than every other phone. It didn't have an app store, so the
interesting things were maps and a web browser, but with only 2.5G internet,
they were mostly unusable.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
I know someone who is still using an iPhone 1 and seems happy with it.

~~~
sli
My parents still watched DVDs over composite cables on their 4K TV until this
past Christmas when I got them a Bluray player, but that doesn't inherently
say anything positive about the quality of that setup.

~~~
megablast
I disagree, it means they prefer the content way more than the resolution.
Like most people.

------
fsloth
Not entirely convinced that Apple would own the mobile space without Android.
There were lot of mobile handset incumbents when IPhone came out. It was the
one-two punch of IPhone AND Android that destroyed the handset dominance of
the likes of Nokia and Blackberry.

Had there not been an Android, I'm pretty sure one of those incumbents would
have come up with something.

Nokia, for example, had lots of nice Linux handheld devices before IPhone.
They were encumbered by a degraded engineering culture and Symbian.

People don't remember but, what actually killed Nokia handsets in one stroke
was one memo by their then CEO Stehphen Elop where he basically stated their
platform as it is was dead in the water. Until then they had had a fairly good
portion of the market, but that single statement just killed it. People who
did not like IPhone moved from Nokia phones to Android after that.

Now, without Android, there might have not been such an obvious migration
path, and Nokia might have kept some of it's customers. Nokia managed to get
some great handsets out after that, but they had already lost market momentum.

Nokia was never a big competitor in the US market mainly because they refused
to play the game by the operators rules, hence the operators did not really
endorse them.

Without Android, once again, I think there might have been openings for Nokia
to get into the handset market state side.

Or Blackberry or Ericsson might have come up with something.

The thing that commoditized handset market was not actually Android, but the
availability of cheap radio circuits from Asia. Until then the radio
technology had been the secret sauce of the encumbents, not software. When the
radio stack became commoditized, the playing field changed fairly rapidly.

I'm pretty sure there would have been competing Linux enabled smart devices in
one way or another without Android. Android just got there first.

~~~
bitL
NOKIA had N9, the only phone that was well-received by US reviewers, quite few
calling it better than iPhone, yet Elop killed it off by not allowing it to
sell in major markets (e.g. Germans had to buy it in Switzerland).

NOKIA was used by Microsoft's investors as a way to get MS back into mobile
game, unsuccessfully. It was an internal coup. With the revenue and world-wide
market share they had, they could have survived for a few years, finally going
full speed ahead with MeeGo, at the cost of never making it in the US, but
continuing their dominance in the rest of the world.

There seems to be some foul play involved in ruining NOKIA as Elop had a bonus
for the sale of a company in his initial contract and the chairman of the
board publicly distrusted his own engineers as unable to compete with Silicon
Valley.

Finnish economy is still in shambles from NOKIA's downfall and only Google/US
profited from taking over the fastest growing market segment at that time from
NOKIA. EU lost its only competitive tech company.

~~~
ahartmetz
If there was foul play involved, you'd have to pull back a few more curtains
to find it. Information that transpired after it was all over was that the
Nokia board hired Elop with the assignment to sell to Microsoft.

The N9 is a really sad story. I had one, it was great. It did get some "better
than iPhone" reviews. It was in development for too long, and when it was
released and it was great, Nokia was too cowardly to bet on it.

~~~
bitL
I am wondering if the surveillance capitalism we have now would have been
impeded if NOKIA was still around in full force. I miss time when my phone
didn't track everything I did. The only alternative I own now is running on
SailfishOS, from MeeGo team members.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's not just your phone that spies on you, it's mostly the _apps_ on it that
do. With no Android to push it so hard and fast, perhaps surveillance
capitalism would be a bit less developed by now, but I doubt the difference
would be all that big. The allure of corrupt money is just too high, and the
pressure is industry-wide.

~~~
dirtydroog
But it's the OS that allows apps to spy on you.

~~~
TeMPOraL
There's only so much an OS can do about it. Every feature that can be used for
tracking has also legitimate user-beneficial uses.

~~~
dirtydroog
Not true, Symbian was highly locked down. You needed permission for pretty
much anything, and some of them required you to ask Nokia for permission. It's
probably part of the reason why it didn't take off in the US.

------
GeekyBear
If you go back to articles written closer to the Android launch, the company
Google was worried about at the time was Microsoft.

>Google was building a secret mobile product to fend off chief rival
Microsoft. Then Apple announced the iPhone, and everything changed.

Chris DeSalvo’s reaction to the iPhone was immediate and visceral. “As a
consumer I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer,
I thought ‘We’re going to have to start over.’”

“What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties,” DeSalvo said. “It’s just
one of those things that are obvious when you see it.”

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-d...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-
day-google-had-to-start-over-on-android/282479/)

When Apple introduced the iPhone, the incumbent market leaders dismissed it.

Google immediately tossed out the UI of their Blackberry clone and copied the
iPhone's UI instead.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Steve Ballmer's reaction(s) to the iPhone are the most hylarious. An example
here [0]

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U)

~~~
oblio
Well, it's obviously very funny in retrospect, but you have to put yourself in
his shoes. Hardware is under-powered from what it seems, to make a general
computing device that is small enough, has long enough battery life and
doesn't cost a ton of money. Also people are very price sensitive about
devices they only use for limited communication (phone calls, SMS, maybe some
emails). They are far less price sensitive when that device becomes a general
purpose computer and media machine and does basically everything they need
related to getting information and entertainment, on the go at that!

He didn't know about the software keyboard innovations that Apple had created
(for example the predictive keyboards, the haptic feedback, etc.) and
Microsoft wasn't making the whole product so they couldn't optimize the
experience as much in order to have reasonable performance and battery life
with a small device.

Though I'll grant you that Ballmer was the king of over the top reactions
("Developers!" :-D ).

~~~
deanCommie
I think the most illuminating thing about Ballmer here is the way he speaks
about features of Microsoft devices, and it shows why the company lost a
decade of innovation under him: "it will 'do' Web, or will 'do' email".

These are feature check boxes to him. It's not a question of whether the
feature is GOOD, whether browsing the web is a delightful experience that the
users actually want to do on the device. Nope - it'll do web. That's it. No
more questions.

~~~
themacguffinman
This is very much the enterprise mindset where purchasers often don't have to
actually use the software, so you can sell them impressive checklists.

------
sxp
The timeline doesn't seem correct. According to
[https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/misc/Tim](https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/misc/Tim),
the author joined Google in 2010.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)#His...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_\(operating_system\)#History)
says "Android Inc. was founded ... 2003" and "In July 2005 ... Google acquired
Android Inc". The iPhone launched in 2007.

Google knew about it earlier since they were partnering for Maps & YouTube,
but it's incorrect to state that Google was doing Android in response to the
iPhone.

The Android acquisition was initially a response to the horribly fragmented
and underpowered mobile phone ecosystem that Google was trying to get its
software onto. Android & the Open Handset Alliance unified it and gave Google
an easier way to develop for billions of devices. Android had to be redesigned
after the iPhone launched to switch to the new stylus-free & button-free
paradigm, but it initially wasn't a response to the iPhone.

~~~
kccqzy
> it's incorrect to state that Google was doing Android in response to the
> iPhone.

Yeah sure, but pre-iPhone Android phones looked and worked very differently
from modern Android phones. Google knew it needed to get into mobile phones;
it's just that at that time it thought its competitor was Microsoft with its
Windows CE phones, or BlackBerry. Google had a major pivot in Android
development in 2007. Take a look at what Android phones looked like before the
iPhone:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HTC_HT722G700375_20080211...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HTC_HT722G700375_20080211.jpg)
This was the "Sooner" phone built in 2006–7.

~~~
the-rc
Vic was not at Google in 2005, when the Android acquisition happened, and he
might have thrown in some hindsight to retrofit the reality of 2007-2010 onto
the original decision. Fifteen years ago, Google knew too well about the
Microsoft monopoly on the desktop, even after the antitrust lawsuit, and
didn't want to be at their mercy. Back then, that was a much more tangible and
plausible threat than Apple, to the point that they referred to MS using
codenames. It's funny how, despite Ballmer promising to kill Google, a few
years later Jobs ended up escalating a thermonuclear patent and PR war that
was just as incendiary.

~~~
leoc
And MS, in its turn, was almost certainly not in both smartphones and consoles
simply because it had too much money and was looking for something to do. MS'
top management was famously familiar with _The Innovator 's Dilemma_, and
smartphones and the console were (along with the Web browser) very clearly
Windows' vulnerable flanks. It was only devastating incompetence on Sony's
part which prevented the PlayStation series from ever becoming a significant
(non-gaming) app and Web-browser platform (see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22288221](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22288221)
).

------
adrianmonk
And then a second, similar situation played out again after Google created
Android.

Just like Google knew it would be left out of it didn't do something, the
iPhone was an AT&T exclusive at first, and Verizon was afraid they'd be left
out of the smartphone thing and lose subscribers. So they bankrolled an
enormous marketing campaign, which is why one fall/winter (IIRC) everyone in
the US was bombarded with endless Motorola Droid ads.

The AT&T exclusive ended, of course, but it's quite possible Android might not
have gotten off the ground if Verizon hadn't felt a threat too. There's
definitely no guarantee Google would have spent on marketing. Back then,
Google didn't really believe in advertising itself through traditional
channels like TV. When Google was a younger company, word of mouth was always
enough marketing for its earlier products like web search and Gmail. It's only
pretty recently in the grand scheme of things (after Android's rise to
popularity) that Google got into that kind of marketing.

So that's one way in which hindsight shows that the AT&T exclusive might have
been a bad move for Apple. If they hadn't done that, it might have been harder
for Android to make inroads with carriers (through business deals) and with
customers (through advertising).

~~~
tjoff
How a carrier has any say in what phone is used on their network (other than
banning dangerous devices) sounds absolutely absurd.

I bet the US situation is also repsonsible for the carrier vetting of all(?)
OS upgrades. Doesn't make any sense either.

~~~
bestnameever
> I bet the US situation is also repsonsible for the carrier vetting of all(?)
> OS upgrades. Doesn't make any sense either.

I doubt carriers vetting os upgrades is something that they do just for fun.
One, users often hold the carrier directly responsible when things don't work
correctly on their network or device. Besides that, I'm sure there are other
concerns or factors we may not be aware of.

~~~
tialaramex
If you try hard enough you can always imagine "factors we may not be aware of"
to explain differences from the rest of the world that are in fact just caused
by US policy. You'll see that with gun deaths, healthcare costs, a host of
problems.

The carriers "vetting" upgrades weren't doing any actual work, it's just a
shakedown. Nice phone OS you have there, shame if critical updates were...
delayed.

~~~
bestnameever
> The carriers "vetting" upgrades weren't doing any actual work, it's just a
> shakedown. Nice phone OS you have there, shame if critical updates were...
> delayed.

The carriers do in fact test the releases prior to them being released. I'm
not sure if the carriers have to pay the manufactures to provide the release
but I would not be surprised if that is the case.

> If you try hard enough you can always imagine "factors we may not be aware
> of" to explain differences from the rest of the world that are in fact just
> caused by US policy.

It is not clear to me that this has anything to do with US policy as many
manufacturers IIRC provide different carriers with different updates and at
different times, not just in the us, but around the world.

I really don't think either you or myself are qualified to say one way or the
other...unless that is you have experience on the business side of running one
of these large mobile networks. Having said that, I don't think one has to
think very hard to see a reason for requiring testing..one reason might just
be liability.

~~~
lotsofpulp
You don’t need to run a large mobile network to observe that being cut out of
the loop results in fewer profits. Carriers were in position to get a cut of
all “app” and ringtone sales and whatnot. Being a gatekeeper offered
tremendous profit potential that Apple took away.

Nobody wants to be a dumb commoditized data pipe.

------
neuromancer2600
I was at Stanford during the time when the iPhone launched in the late summer
of 2007. In the subsequent fall quarter, I took a class that was taught by
Eric Schmid. When the topic in one of the classes came to Android, Eric
admitted straight out that Google has one primary goal: to get more people
onto the Internet. Because more people on the Internet would mean more people
would search for content, generating more revenue for Google. Making Android
available for free was lowering the cost for mobile phones.

There were other devices out there that qualified as smartphones and enabled
users to browse the Internet (just think of the terrible HTC Touch, powered by
Windows Pocket PC). Hence the threat wasn't just Apple.

------
__ka
Fundamentally, Google protects its search by owning all entry points to it (or
paying massive fees for competition-prohibitive distribution deals.

The strategy can be seen at play with the Chrome browser, Android and its
licensing model for hardware manufacturers, paying Firefox and Apple for
placing search as default in their respective platforms. They know that once
distribution barriers for search fall, their existence is threatened,
explaining even moves like Google Fiber.

We wrote at length about this issue in our blog
[https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-22/google-competition-is-
just-...](https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-22/google-competition-is-just-one-
click-and-27-billion-us-dollars-away.html)

~~~
streetcat1
Google is not a search company, it is an ad company.

An ad company needs data about you. A search company needs data about web
sites.

Owning Andriod assures that they get the data about you.

The rest is irrelevant.

------
ulfw
Vic wasn‘t involved in the decision to build Android and what it‘s going to
look like and how. The decision to buy Andy Rubin‘s team happened years
earlier.

------
smt88
It is deeply frustrating that we have 2.5 mobile ecosystems: Apple, Google,
and Amazon. I find that all three excel at something other than consumer
software, and the iPhone-imitating phablet landscape is far more homogeneous
than we were promised.

I wish that Android had been a push for standard APIs and drivers instead of a
full OS, allowing us to have some choice. Google clearly didn't need Android
that much, as they still do well on iPhones without the massive investment
that Android required.

~~~
v7p1Qbt1im
They pay Apple like $12 billion a year to stay the default search engine in
Safari. Not exactly free. If they didn‘t have Android they wouldn‘t have any
leverage at all in the mobile space.

~~~
smt88
> _If they didn‘t have Android they wouldn‘t have any leverage at all in the
> mobile space._

I disagree. Most iPhone users seem to be Gmail users at least. Google Maps and
Waze are far better than Apple Maps.

I think Google itself originally pursued Android hoping for their own
exclusive ecosystem and then changed their strategy to just build apps for iOS
that are better than Apple's.

------
justapassenger
Owning a compute platform is an extremely powerful asset, that all tech giants
are fighting for. Especially as computing became something that average Joe
does, compared to a geeky hobby.

With mobile platforms, it allows you to control what competitors apps can do
and exclude your apps from same limits (like full control over notifications),
you can charge border line extortion prices for purchases on your platform
(30% is margin to kill for in any business), gives you all the analytics about
what people are doing (no need to spyware or sketchy vpns - you get sources
data about all downloads, purchases, even running apps to some extent), and
many, many more.

I don’t know will be the next big computing platform, but I’m 100% sure tech
giants will be fighting super hard and dirty to dominate it.

------
Udik
I remember the argument- heard a long time ago, much before mobile phones
became a thing- that progress and incumbent replacement in the computer
industry has always happened when new, smaller generations of machines
replaced the previous ones: from mainframes, to minicomputers, to
microcomputers. That is surely how Microsoft became the dominant player in the
80s and 90s.

I guess the current mobile phones could be called nanocomputers, and the
opportunity to displace Microsoft's dominance in the OS market was too good to
miss.

------
spaceflunky
Can I just say I really enjoyed the format of this blog post?

Short and to the point. He could've dragged this out for pages like most do,
but he got a lot economy in a 20 sec read.

I wish they were all like this.

~~~
raiyu
Agreed, just like most business books could be 5-7 short blog posts. But I
understand the need to put in filler there to justify the price, but still
would prefer an almost executive summary at the start of each book that gives
you all of the essentials and leaves it open to the reader to dig in deeper at
a later time if necessary.

I have a friend who just started a new role at Mongo and I'm giving him a
bunch of books to read, but now he has to go through 2,000-3,000 pages of
text, instead of getting the exec summary in 25-40 pages and having a good
grasp of the subject and then diving in to the details where necessary.

------
tommilukkarinen
I was working with Nokia phones 2007-2009, and then later with Meego/Windows
Phone/Android and there are few turning points I remember.

* Nokia App-Store stopped working. \- I had published my own stuff there, which I could not buy. The store was simply broken, and it seemed no one cared. \- There was no business in Nokia store to be done = no interested developers

* We got an Apple device as soon as it was possible. \- It was obvious that it was very simple to compared to what we were building in Nokia. \- That was the first turning point for me understanding the user experience vs number of features competition. \- Probably something people felt holding clam shell phones at the time, but much more powerful. \- The huge 'magical' difference was the capacitive screen. \- Everything was like 'yeah we have this already', but it's just so much cooler with this magical interface where you actually don't even have to touch

* 'Tube' was announced Nokia-internally \- There was auditorium full of people in the session I was in \- Only question asked was by the 2000 people or so was: 'is it resistant or capacitive?' \- Everyone who knew the difference realized we lost at least another year

* Still, there was a momentum of excitement \- I was thinking it the way like 'lets rework the UI, we will be ahead in stuff like phone call quality, and having stuff like GPS' \- They probably have the capacitive in the next model after Tube or so? \- I saw lot of great stuff been built, and talented people worked with stuff that would become Meego

* Sinking the Symbian \- I was no longer working with Nokia, instead doing own stuff. \- This was like 'WTF', instead of existing code base living for next five years, we would have to abandon it immediately \- This was the second time abandoning developers

* Announcing Windows Phone \- This was like 'ok, I can work with this' \- The problem was, it took too long to come to market \- Only options were in this time window to work with iPhone or Android \- This was no longer 'abandoning developers', it was simply no longer possible \- There were other early Windows Phones, but for reason or another, no serious commitment at any point

* Nokia Windows Phone entering the market \- Market had already been split by Android and iPhone \- It was already a challenger at that point \- I think everyone who tried it saw the potential, but it lost because of app stores in Android and iPhone already were full of stuff - and it was clear at this point already \- I was surprised that Microsoft bought Nokia phones, because it was so obvious what would happen, maybe it was something like 'were sorry about Elop, here's money for the doctor'

------
mrgreenfur
I've always heard the explanation as: it's a strategy to commoditize
complementary products and a complement to search is browsers (Chrome) and a
compliment to browsers are devices (Android). By getting to the devices and
browsers first, they saved themselves millions in fees to seed chrome and
google as defaults.

Maybe this explanation is more hindsight than foresight.

------
jameslin
Google did Android because a few reasons, lets point out the obvious ones:

1\. Like article mentioned, avoid monopoly by Apple. 2\. A phone is the best
device to collect your data, not just the browser level but it's operating
system level. When you drive, no matter if you are using google map or not,
they will send your GPS data to their server, whether it is anonymous or not.

~~~
scarface74
There was never going to be a monopoly by Apple. The average price of an
iPhone is $700-$800. The average price of an Android is $250. Apple would have
never priced its phone low enough to appeal to the mass market.

------
Vrondi
They publicly said in interviews when Android was initially bought, that they
were doing mobile so that people could do Google searches literally
everywhere, so they could have ad revenue when people were away from their
computers. They were very open about it at the time. "Google search in your
pocket".

------
innagadadavida
Vic’s argument can be applied to almost everything Google has for. Google+
turned out far less successful though.

~~~
ulfw
And that is a project Vic ACTUALLY ran.

------
stuaxo
This attitude explains why Android TV isn't that good. Feel a little burned by
buying one TBH.

~~~
auiya
Most Android-based devices are disposable products for which Google has no
intention of supporting long-term.

------
einpoklum
"For the same reason we do everything, Pinky - to try to take over... THE
WORLD!"

------
isarat
As described in the article, I believe it's more on the advertising side than
beating the monopoly for a great cause.

------
sub7
Can you figure out why they're doing what they're doing _to_ Android right
now?

------
mbf1
Cloud is an existential threat to Google. Amazon got there first. Microsoft
got there 2nd.

~~~
exhilaration
I disagree, Amazon's or Microsoft's cloud services dominance doesn't impact
how Google makes nearly all of its money: advertising.

~~~
dana321
Cloud isn't just cloud.

Google's infrastructure is a cloud, the only thing a competitor needs is the
software / services to replace Google. And a lot of them are already there,
being recreated.

That's why they want in, because Google & co. could easily become the next
television.. Its still there, but most people don't care about it any more
because of a shift in technology and the way people use the internet.

------
hardwaresofton
This might be a silly question but does google already sell browser activity?
Ads through doubleclick/analytics is one thing but are they already selling
just straight the-user-opened-their-browser-and-went-to-these-5-sites-today
type data?

~~~
skybrian
Google says they don't sell personal information [1], and I've never heard a
credible source say that they bought any. It doesn't stop people from making
all sorts of claims, though.

[1] [https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-
data/](https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-data/)

~~~
GeekyBear
If Google uses cookie based ad tracking, how do they prevent others from
reading the cookies?

TechCrunch certainly implied that Google's approach shared information in a
way that Apple's former iAd platform did not back in the day.

>what [iAd] reveals to its advertising partner is next to nil; rather than
offering a cookie-based ad-tracking and targeting mechanism, it essentially
requires partners to tell it what kind of audience it needs to reach, and then
trust that Apple will handle the rest, AdAge says. And it’s well worth noting
that Apple prioritizes customer privacy here over a big potential upside in ad
revenue.

...what it doesn’t do is hand over the keys to all that data and let
advertisers plug into it directly with their own data-mining and targeting
software. That’s not standard for the ad industry and that’s likely the reason
a few Madison Avenue feathers are ruffled over their approach.

[https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/18/advertisers-not-
thrilled-w...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/18/advertisers-not-thrilled-
with-apples-practice-of-protecting-its-users-data/)

Has their approach changed?

~~~
aembleton
> If Google uses cookie based ad tracking, how do they prevent others from
> reading the cookies?

For security reasons, your browser won't send the cookie to other domains.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Cookies can now be kept on a public server. Which can be shared with anyone
(who pays).

In this case it's not the browser 'cookie' mechanism. But its still user-
identification data available for web pages to customize the experience.

------
btilly
In other words, the same reason that Amazon did the Kindle.

------
gerosan
Anyone got a "Why Apple Did iOS" article handy?

------
nathias
it did it because its the same business plan as everything else they do;
become the infrastructure then slowly exploit it

------
FlimFlamOne
Smit performed the largest peice of industrial espionage in history.

------
jbverschoor
Sorry, but Android has nothing to do with iPhone.

It was a clone of the blackberry OS

~~~
dwaite
The title of the original article is perhaps poorly phrased - it is not 'Why
Google Did Android' but 'Why Google was Funding Android in 2010'. My
recollection is as follows:

Originally, Android started as a response to feature phones with poor
(sometimes WAP-only) browsers, where the internet was started on the mobile
provider's portal page and was hardly ever worth visiting. Google purchased
the project that eventually became Android, and it started out looking mostly
like a Blackberry clone.

Google felt like they had to pay Apple for a place on the phone - which they
still do via their contract to make Google the default search provider.
Previous smart phone experiences (such as blackberry) were quickly obsolete,
and Google (along with several other manufacturers) started targeting that new
experience.

The lead that iPhone had (as pretty much the only consumer-targeted phone with
a high-quality internet experience) and Google's risk that someone like Yahoo
or Bing (launched in 2009) would outbid their place as the default search
provider made iPhone the existential threat. Even without the search risk,
Android still deserved to be funded to target all of the markets that Apple
purposely would not try to hit.

There was of course the overlap of Eric Schmidt on the board of Apple over two
years after the iPhone was publicly announced. The point that Schmidt felt it
was too big of a conflict of interest to remain was late 2009.

If suspect if Android hadn't come along, we'd be perhaps 6-18 months farther
back on technology, with 1/3 of the world on iPhones, 1/3 on Windows Phone,
and 1/3 on assorted crap phones. Nokia may have lasted long enough to have a
viable competitor as well.

------
_pmf_
> I wonder if Vic was right about what would’ve happened if they hadn’t done
> Android?

We'd have Windows Phone phones. Something like Windows 10 would have come
around 2010/2012\. Which would be good because we'd have 3 players instead of
Google controlling everything end to end.

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sandGorgon
I heard a statement once - Every product that Google makes is one more attempt
to convince the world that it is not a monopoly.

It was given in a closed door talk, so i shan't attribute it.

~~~
redkinght99
Smells like a Peter Thiel quote to me.

