
Andy Rubin Leaving Google - atupem
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/former-android-leader-andy-rubin-leaving-google-1414713040-lMyQjAxMTE0NTMxMDQzOTA4Wj
======
edderly
I think it’s a good time to reflect on the massive impact of Android on the
mobile OS market.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_operating_system#Market_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_operating_system#Market_share)

The Android team under Rubin executed extraordinarily well with a tiny
fraction of Google’s engineering resources.

~~~
autism_hurts
By riding the coat tails and blatantly copying Apple.

~~~
72deluxe
What about the underlying architecture of the OS though? Linux with a Java
runtime and a new windowing layer that stops "normal" Linux apps running?
Running each dalvik process in its own confined user process? What about the
design for background services and foreground activities that can be switched
to/from (multitasking) right from the beginning, with AIDL for implementing
service definitions? What about Intents and the ability to pass messages
between processes? What about access to the filesystem in a "normal" way?

What about the "desktop" on Android? Where did they copy that from?

iOS didn't have multitasking until a lot later, and the concept of background
services is more aggressively policed (that is, processes killed often) on
iOS, as far as I know?

Sure, the superficial layer on top (look! icons! rows of icons!) that children
in a sweet shop would notice may look familiar, but underneath it is not
anything alike is it?

Or are you saying it is?

~~~
rimantas

      > iOS didn't have multitasking until a lot later, and the
      > concept of background services is more aggressively
      > policed (that is, processes killed often) on iOS, as far
      > as I know?
    

Ugh, of course iOS had multitasking from the very beginning as you would
expect from unix kernel. The access to it from third party apps is entirely
different question.

~~~
socrates2014
iOS had restricted multitasking exposed to apps for awhile (definitely by iOS
5) but it was restricted to certain kinds of apps: VOIP, background audio,
newsstand, location awareness, or to a restricted period of time after the app
is backgrounded.

They expanded it quite a bit in iOS 7? to all apps with background fetch,
background url upload and download tasks, silent push notifications, and
background tasks.

All of these approaches do not work if a user forcibly shuts down the app (I
am not quite sure of every case). All these mechanisms are controlled by the
OS: we'll call you, don't call us sort of thing and if you don't return in a
certain period of time or if we need to, we will shut you down.

In iOS 8 you have extension support which launches mini apps. Extensions are
somewhat equivalent to services but they are about integration with
multitasking an implementation detail for security purposes.

------
throwawaygoogle
Sundar is heir apparent and everyone else gets a pet project or gets out of
his way. Just how it feels right now-- not exactly earth shattering news.

------
fidotron
The surprise is he lasted so long. I really hope this is not the last we've
heard of him.

Sundar appears to be walking proof that victors get to write history, but I'm
not sure how long he'll be able to keep that act up.

~~~
judk
What does that mean? What history?

~~~
oldxoog
I agree it's a pretty trite comment - unless op meant he lasted so long ".. on
the robotics junket" aka exit lobby, in which case I'd agree.

Andy could be a pain but his accomplishments speak for him -- Android has long
been seen as a massive success, warts and all, at the highest levels of goog.

~~~
mbca
Android is only a "success" insofar as being the only game in town for an
open-source iOS competitor. I'm frankly amazed it ever gained any traction at
all, but when your competition is non-free garbage like Symbian, Blackberry,
and Windows mobile, I guess you can just win by default. Especially when you
have the might of Google's multi-billion dollar support behind you.

Android has already gotten miles better in the year since Rubin is no longer
involved, seeing long-needed improvements such as Chrome for the browser and
WebViews, radically better runtime, more unified UI design, etc. Overall,
Android is much better off without him and I look forward to whatever comes
next (for Android, not Rubin).

~~~
nostrademons
That could be an indication that building a viable mobile phone OS is _really,
really hard_.

While I'm also quite glad to see the recent Chrome/Android integration, I
think Rubin should get a lot of credit for getting Android to the point where
it's even worth integrating with. A bunch of competitors tried and failed; I'm
glad that there's more than just Apple available in the mobile OS market.

~~~
xorcist
It is. But something I never understood was the choice of Java. For the
original Android it made sense as it was an excellent argument for an
acquisition. But since Google it was just an invitation for trouble with
Sun/Oracle.

It's not like they don't have excellent runtime designers in house. They could
have taken the opportunity to go with Python or something else entirely when
they rewrote so much anyway.

~~~
edraferi
Yup, I want to live in a universe where Android is built on Python3.

~~~
nostrademons
I would love that too, but Python is a poor choice for mobile environments
where every CPU cycle costs you battery life. Python code often takes up to
30x more CPU to accomplish the same work. I already get annoyed at how quickly
my Moto X drains the battery when navigating or playing games; if that were
30x faster, the phone would be useless.

Now, you could argue that maybe Google should just make a more efficient
Python interpreter. They did that for Android Java anyway, with Dalvik. But
the design of the Python language makes it hard to optimize; witness the
failure of Unladen Swallow, and all the incredibly talented engineer-hours
that have gone into PyPy. A lot more happens, semantically, in each expression
or function call than happens in Java or C.

~~~
xorcist
CPython is not very fast, but that has nothing to do with Dalvik. When
designing Dalvik from scratch they could have chosen any syntax, they didn't
have to stick with Java. They could just as easily have chosen something
Pythonic and ended up with something close to Groovy.

Performance was obviously not the main goal with Dalvik. If it was they would
have gone with something like C++ or Go. The first versions of Dalvik was
quite slow. Compact bytecode looks like the design goal which probably made
sense since mobile bandwidth wasn't great at the time.

~~~
nostrademons
Right, they could've chosen any syntax, but they can't necessarily choose any
semantics. Dalvik (and now ART) doesn't just look like Java, it behaves like
Java, which means that if you're a Java programmer you can pick up Android
basically immediately and have a good idea how it works. If they'd chosen a
Python syntax but left out, say, keyword arguments and metaclasses and
overloading of built-in operators, I doubt many Python developers would
consider it the same language.

------
dougabug
Whether intentional or not, Rubin's earlier initiative vacuuming up many of
the interesting robot companies into Google, would seem to create great new
opportunities for new robotics startups.

------
emehrkay
Him and Forstall will team up and change computing

~~~
isomorphic
...an open-source BigDog with a locked bootloader, and green felt outer
cladding.

------
charlie_vill
Asking HN

This might be a little bit of a far stretch, but based on the belief that
anyone is reachable, would anyone have any leads to Mr. Rubin or would know
how to make contact with him?

tw @carlosvivaldi

~~~
elpachuco
[https://twitter.com/Arubin](https://twitter.com/Arubin)

Who knows if he still checks it though.

------
TheTaO
Not surprising given how things have come together under Sundar in recent
months.

~~~
amaks
What's wrong with Sundar?

------
wfjackson
This thread just 4 days ago on HN is interesting in this context.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8506911](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8506911)

Google employees were implying that Andy Rubin got bored of Android and left
to work on robotics and people suggesting the opposite were getting downvoted.
It still could be true but looks less likely down.

~~~
oldxoog
Throwaway because I know with pretty strong confidence what went down --

The truth seems to be both (a) unpleasant for Andy and (b) unremarkable to the
rest of us. In other words, it wasn't his choice, but there wasn't a
scandalous smoking gun either. He just wanted what Larry wouldn't give him.
Nothing that would be front page news.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I expect it might be more unpleasant for wannabe Andys. But I agree it was
unremarkable. Scott McNealy used to congratulate people getting promoted with
"One step up, one step closer to the door." That captured the balancing act
between climbing the ladder versus being pushed off of it because someone else
wanted your spot. I think Andy will be much happier in his new role, and it
isn't like he has to work for a living any more :-)

~~~
larrys
"Scott McNealy used to congratulate people getting promoted with "One step up,
one step closer to the door.""

God knows when I hear things like that I thank my lucky stars I don't have to
work in a large corporation or answer to anyone but customers. (Well more than
that obviously but at least I'm not at the whims of corporate culture.)

~~~
atmosx
Any idea of the salary of the people Larry Page likes to whim? I mean, lets
not get crazy, working for G comes with all kind of perks!

~~~
lrem
Yup, G perks are cool, but also G salary was the lowest I was offered outside
of France...

