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The net outcome of this decision will be that nobody will create significant open platforms of this type anymore, because once you are successful you will no longer be able to have any control over the experience. Someone will always be able to find a market that you are hurting.

If you actually read the decision that's essentially their underlying complaint. They dress it up in terms about search market blah blah blah, but in the end it's really about whether Google is allowed to control the experience of Android phones that want to use the Google apps and app store or not. Android being open at all was already a fight inside Google, this decision will essentially make it impossible for anybody win that fight in the future. I can't see why anyone would risk making an open platform again. Success only has downsides versus Apple's model. I expect the next major player here will either sell the operating system or sell the phones, and keep the other stuff closed






Having worked for so many years at Google, you should be aware that your employer is forbidding Android manufacturers to also produce any non-certified Android-based devices. No Android logo, no app store, no GApps, still forbidden if that company happens to sell an unrelated Android device.

So in fact it is not about "whether Google is allowed to control the experience of Android phones that want to use the Google apps and app store or not".

Regarding open source, Android v1 was an underpowered and underfeatured newcomer in a market dominated by Symbian and Blackberry where Windows was at a few percent and iOS was making inroads.

There's a very good chance that without it being open source it would have went precisely nowhere. Let's not rewrite history and make it look like Android was a clear winner from the beginning, back then even iPhone was pretty crap, and Android was that times two.


(The rest we are going to disagree on. I know the specifics of these agreements and advised on some of them, so i can't talk about them for rea)

"There's a very good chance that without it being open source it would have went precisely nowhere. "

Why? You say a lot of things, but none seem to related to why this is true. As far as i can tell, it is definitively not true.

The app developers were happy to go where there was money, and the users certainly didn't care.

Again, i'm a huge supporter of open source projects, i donate to the FSF, etc. I would love for it to be the case to say that Android was a success/failure because of open source. It's just i've seen exactly zero data that supports this notion, and a lot that doesn't.

The real history rewrite here is the rewrite that Android didn't enable choice or competition. Before Android all of the systems you're talking about had user interfaces that were tightly controlled by the carriers right down to the Verizon internet browser. Your best case scenario would be apple winning. Your worst case scenario is you still have Verizon deciding what your phone user interface should be like.


Developers and users generally won't care whether it's open source, I agree. Manufacturers like Samsung or Sony would though, especially after their experiences with Symbian. Not because they care about freedom, but because they want to have some form of control over their own destiny.

The US market was always an anomaly and under tight carrier control. There the iPhone and Android enabled choice. This is however mostly irrelevant for the EU and especially for this verdict. It's undeniable that there are now fewer choices and competitors available, and that most of the ones that are gone have been killed by Android: Windows Phone, Blackberry, Symbian, Meego, FirefoxOS, etc.


I must say that the whole situation is very disappointing. While western companies have been folding, China has a very active smartphone ecosystem with multiple manufacturers of phones and many different providers of services, including app stores. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?

Android got market share because it was free, not because it was good. If Google didn't share ad revenue with carriers and OEMs or tried to extract a license fee ala Windows, Google would not be sitting on 80% global market share today.

> Android got market share because it was free, not because it was good.

If free was all that mattered then one of the other smattering of "free" open source mobile OSes would have taken off. You can perhaps say that free is a necessary condition but it clearly isn't sufficient. Something else matters and to a first approximation that can be thought of as "goodness".


The world has changed. Today what determines the success of a mobile platform is availability if applications. If Ubuntu's thing could run WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram apps (especially the first b/c it has to be an app), it would have a completely different fate. If I was Mark Shuttleworth, I'd go to Facebook and offer porting WhatsApp for free. IDK the US, but for most of the world, it's an essential means of communication.

Mozilla was so eager to get WhatsApp on Firefox OS that it wrote a proof of concept J2ME.js interrupter [1] (repurposing Shumway's Flash-to-JS JIT) to run WhatsApp's Java applet. But WhatsApp was not interested. This was a big blow because lack of WhatsApp support was one of the top complaints or deal breakers for Firefox OS users in its initial markets.

[1] https://github.com/mozilla/pluotsorbet


> If I was Mark Shuttleworth, I'd go to Facebook and offer porting WhatsApp for free

Microsoft tried buying app support and it didn't save their mobile platform. It generally resulted in crappy apps that were never an ongoing priority for their creators. If anything it cemented the status of the OS as a second class citizen.

You can try every way you like, but nothing completes the picture than to say that there were good things about Android that made it survive as the competition to iOS where everything else failed. The OS being "good" (on a relative scale, there were obviously some bad things about it) is, like everything else, necessary but not sufficient.

In my view, the real reason Android succeeded is because it was customisable by the OEMs. They were staring at a future where they were completely locked out of doing any customisation of operating system and totally at the mercy of Apple. They would do anything to prevent that future and Google gave them a lifeline to do so. That customisability was a byproduct of Android being open source, but obviously Google could have made it closed source to the public but licensed it to OEMs with a proprietary license allowing customisation too. I think the latter wasn't viable because it would have required too much trust in Google.


This argument doesn't make any sense.

Android was developed via billions of dollars of investment by Google. Google has no obligation to provide a free OSS variant, other than for the parts that are GPL'ed.

If all Google is offering is the complete Android experience (including the App store and all the Google apps,) and not any OSS variant, how are manufacturers limited exactly ? They can either use Android, that is being offered to them for free, or roll their own OS.


Google has no obligation to provide the OSS version, but they can't really afford to close Android either, it would be a major PR blow and Samsung would basically immediately ship their own fork, perhaps with the Amazon store and a couple extra apps to replace the Google maps, Chrome, etc.

Manufacturers are limited contractually. This is detailed in the EU press release linked to this thread. Alas, one still has to actually read it or alternatively have some knowledge about how Android is licensed.


> you should be aware that your employer is forbidding Android manufacturers to also produce any non-certified Android-based devices

This is true but is not relevant to the situation at hand and Google has very reasonable arguments for insisting on this. As far as I understand it, there is no requirement for a manufacturer to ship Google search or the Play Store on an Android device they manufacture. They only require that manufacturers not fragment the ecosystem by breaking compatibility. If you are going to build on the back of the ecosystem, don't break that same ecosystem, and that is quite reasonable. I am sure Microsoft would not tolerate OEMs licensing windows then modifying the Windows APIs on the installed system to break compatibility with apps made by Microsoft and 3rd parties. I am quite sure they would refuse to continue to license Windows to OEMs that did that.

The issue at hand is around what Google requires once somebody wants to license the Play Store. At that point they are required to also ship Google Search as the default which is the problem.


I cannot agree. The main problem is that Google has proprietary Google Play Services and instead of just selling it Google sets additional terms that prevent competition, like preinstalling competitors' search engines, or competitors' software. It is difficult to earn large profits in a competing market; but this is benefecial for consumers and their interests should be put before Google's.

I'm really unsure what your first sentence about the main problem is supposed to mean, it really doesn't make a lot of sense to me as written, so i'm having trouble responding.

Would you mind rephrasing it a bit, and i'd be happy to try to respond?

I can't see why anyone would ever not follow Apple's model. It effectively immunizes them from antitrust concerns due to low market share, but they still make an ungodly amount of money.

What does Google's model buy them, precisely?


I am sorry if I didn't write it clearly. What I wanted to say is that Google required phone manufacturers not to make agreements with Google's competitors (e.g. not to preinstall competitors's apps or search engine as default) as a condition for obtaining a license for Google Play Services or Google Play. And this is bad for competition in mobile software market and bad for consumers. Instead Google should just sell their software to manufacturers without such conditions.

For example, several years ago a Russian software company, Yandex, wanted to make its own build of Android with Yandex browser and Yandex app store. But after they have talked to smartphone vendors, they learned that in order to obtain licenses for Google software the vendors have signed an agreement with Google forbidding them to make phones with alternative ROMs or replace Google software with competitors' software [1].

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/17/google-reaches-7-8-million...


Ah. So this goes to the question i ask: If Google had to do as you say (sell the software with no restrictions), why would google ever sell the software in the first place?

Microsoft tried that and was fairly unsuccessful.

Future folks would likely just choose the Apple model - don't sell the software at all.


> why would google ever sell the software in the first place?

To earn money. But of course (without restrictions) there would be more competition, there would be alternative Android builds and, as a result, more software not depending on Google Play Services.

If Google could choose Apple model and be profitable, they would choose it from the start. But there is a big difference. Apple makes their own hardware and is good at it. Google doesn't and maybe they didn't want to take a risk so instead they have chosen to make only the software. Also we should remember that Google came to the smartphone market late when it was already conquered by Apple.

For example, Google has tried to enter laptop market with Chromebooks but without noticeable success.

Even if Google makes Android closed source, it doesn't mean that there would be no open platform. Maybe someone will continue developing Android, or some other OS, maybe someone will make a Linux distribution for smartphones.


Future folks

There are not any future folks who can adopt Apple's model.

The only viable mobile OSes for the foreseeable future are Android and iOS, unless Android can be trust-busted. Even Microsoft couldn't do it. And they really tried.

If Android can be de-bundled, then Samsung can pursue Tizen, because Google will not be allowed to prevent it. They're the only ones with sufficient resources and market share to have a shot.

Edit: Or, ironically, Google—who are the only ones not bound by Android OEM agreements—with Fuchsia.


> Android being open at all was already a fight inside Google, this decision will essentially make it impossible for anybody win that fight in the future. I can't see why anyone would risk making an open platform again.

It was a calculated risk that had a handsome payoff, if it worked, which is why it had to be open source, anything short of open source and Android would never have taken off like it did with several handset manufacturers via the OHA [0].

Remember, the context surrounding the need for Android to use an open source model at launch was that they were the underdog, iOS was still nascent but steadily gaining serious market share. The incumbents -- whom Google was hoping to disrupt using the OHA as a trojan horse was Nokia (they enjoyed 73% market share [1] with their Symbian "smartphone" OS) and Blackberry. Nokia would eventually start the process to make Symbian fully open source in 2008 [2], so they could compete better against the OHA [3], but the process didn't complete until 2010[4], which by then was already too late.

IOW, making Android open source was a core part of Google's strategic play to gain market share, there is no point in crying uncle.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Handset_Alliance

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian#Market_share_and_compe...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2008/06/24/symbian-goes-open-source-c...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian_Foundation

[4] https://www.wired.com/2010/02/symbian-operating-system-now-o...


"It was a calculated risk that had a handsome payoff, if it worked, which is why it had to be open source, anything short of open source and Android would never have taken off like it did with several handset manufacturers via the OHA [0]."

This is actually not why it was done (I was there :P), and didn't really factor very much into the calculation at all. So your perspective, while interesting, was not the one used.

In fact, the business folks mostly thought it would be a downside (given all the FUD/etc around the time period).

Your perspective is also interesting because Apple did not go this route and still were wildly successful. So i disagree it "had to be open source or it would not have taken off". I'd like to believe that (really!), but there is an existence proof that this was not true (Apple), and in the end, i just can't bring myself to think what you say is true.

It was open because Andy thought it was best for the world (really. I realize how cliche that sounds, but if you've ever met the guy, you'd realize it was true. He gave pretty much not a shit about the business side of it, it's not what he enjoyed).

As mentioned, the business folks argued that this model would just lead to a shitty experience (among other things) over time. (This was pre-iphone, so apple was not a consideration at the time).

The compromise was "great, let's figure out how we can make sure that doesn't happen through branding guidelines/etc".

Later, after Apple was successful, the business folks all said "look, this model was a mistake, look at Apple". You could still push back and say "we are doing fine".

I don't see how, in the future, the business folks don't win every argument here.

Apple's model is giving them all the money, with none of the downsides.

This seems like a "business school case study" they would teach in the future.


Thanks for giving us a peek at the early development of Android.

It's interesting that Andy was pushing open-source for altruistic reasons, but I'm tempted to think that it happened to also be the best business strategy - despite what the suits thought at the time.

Every business school teaches that IBM made one of the worst business decisions of all time when it licenced the software for its new personal computers from Microsoft. Samsung certainly didn't want to make the same mistake, and an open-source operating system can always be forked so Samsung had a guarantee it wouldn't end up paying the 'Windows tax'.

If Android was closed-source it would have found it much more difficult to get that critical early install base. But with a successful open-source platform it could then develop its closed-source Play service.

To me this one-two punch would make a great business school case study in favour of Android's open/closed-source hybrid approach


I could have sworn that the the open-source thing was a big part of the incentive to develop for Android rather than Apple with its walled garden and arbitrary app store policies. Now development and commitment to the open source track may have begun much earlier. And it was a way for Google to differentiate itself from Apple by having a different business model. My recall of the first couple of years on the market was that everyone knew Android apps were not as fast or as fancy as iOS ones, but 'at least it's an open platform.'

The first part is basically saying "Google chose a thing, so chose to market that as a good thing". Isn't that what everyone does?

As for whether it mattered, honestly, no, i would say didn't. The developers cared whether they could make money, not whether it was open.


How does the business model relate to the source-code being published under a Free Software license?

I don't see how the license of the software relates to it it giving you a shitty experience or not.

The shitty experiences I had on Android were largely due to carrier and OEM spyware and bloatware preinstalled on devices -- deals Google struck.

I had always attributed the security problems to Google having inadequate terms with handset manufacturers, to keep handsets up to date. Specifically, that handsets could automatically fall back to stock Android if the OEM/carrier didn't want to continue to develop their proprietary fork for that line of handsets. Maybe this is wrong. Maybe it was planned obsolescence with unintended consequences.


But there's no saying that future versions of stock Android will work on a specific device. Because it's open source, many OEMs just take the OS and don't upstream the drivers they write. And because Linux has no driver ABI, they need to be recompiled from source for every new version of the OS (and modified accordingly too, because there's no stable driver API either).

That's why project Treble was done.


Very interesting, thank you for the post! I will say that from our perspective on the outside, we (as in techies, app developers, etc) were pretty damned excited for open source. Its why I ditched my iphone and have been android ever since. Pure android is a much better experience, imho, than iphone will ever be or has been in the past.. the problem with android is that you get a nice new android phone and its riddled with crap ware you can't get rid of unless you know how to root and install a nice AOSP rom and the phone is even popular enough to warrant someone figuring out how to root it... which is great for me but not for a lot of other people who don't even know what root is.

I also don't understand why the nexus phone line got cut. I guess it wasn't selling well? I can't understand why though. My wife has a nexus 6p and its a great phone that was well priced.


>It was a calculated risk that had a handsome payoff,

Yes, it payed off in marketshare, but severely limited the profitability of Android and being another major revenue stream for Google. I hope this decision makes them think twice about their strategy for Fuchsia because they seem to be using the Android model all over again. Google really needs to start operating like Apple for better or worse.


That is really the sad thing about this EU decision. There are many benefits to open source, but it is extremely hard to find ways to monetise it. Google's strategy of using their investment in Android to secure Google Search on mobile was one way of monetising it. Whether you agree with it or not, the EU is shutting the door on that, and it will affect people's view of monetising open source far more generally than this specific case.

I'm waiting for the day Alphabet removes Android from Google's umbrella and is expected to contribute to the bottom line. I wonder what they'll do to make that happen... You can either licence Android for a fee or a percentage of the cost of your device. If you would like to use GMS we can also include that for an additional cost.

Which I have to agree. EU basically kills the Android model, and makes monetization based on it impossible, because once you reach the scale of Android, for which it is necessary for such model to be profitable, you will be targeted. So why make things free at all, at least you won't be called as hypocrites.

As the adage goes, if a for-profit corporation gives something away for free, you're not the customer, you're the product. This applies to OEM's, in this case. The "product" is a Google-controlled mobile landscape; the OEM's aren't customers, they're a means to that end.

These days I actually feel more comfortable when things aren't free. It means the company's motives aren't (completely) obfuscated.


I am not missing those days, where I need to pay 100 dollars for a piece of plastic called Windows.

So I can create an open platform and control how it is used? That doesn't make sense.

Err, no, they controlled only the people who chose to use their apps or play store. That's still open, you can do whatever you want, it's just if you want their stuff, you play by their rules.

I think you are twisting the definitions pretty hard. Android isn't open for anyone who also wants access to the dominant app store. If you want that and sign that agreement you can no longer effectively enjoy the right you have under e.g. the GPL and distribute devices with modified versions of the code. As I understand this is legal under the GPL, but certainly very shady towards the developers who made the code available with the intention for it be used openly, rather than being leveraged by Google for their anti-competitive means. Also those practices is preventing other developers, who has as much right to the code under the license, from using those manufacturers. This is a clear attempt of trying to use their dominant position to control the market and shut out the competition from those manufacturers, not just controlling the manufacturers themselves which would be bad enough in the first place. And that is exactly why they are being and should be fined.

Windows is also open. You can do whatever you want, it's just if you want their stuff (except .NET and Powershell), you play by their rules.

That has nothing to do with open software.

So it's not open.

It's not that complicated.

The Google apps and the app store are not open. Everything else is.


Google Apps Agreement prohibits you from enjoying the openness of that everything else.

And now the EU Commission thinks that this is an unfair (due to market share) agreement, because it prevents competition. (Which is trivially does, since no OEM can start making and marketing and selling a competitor.)


Google has abandoned most AOSP apps. It has moved large parts of the API into Play Services. Android is not open, what is open is merely an incompatible fragment of an OS.

"nobody will create significant open platforms of this type anymore, because once you are successful you will no longer be able to have any control "

'open' and 'control' are hard to reconcile.


> The net outcome of this decision will be that nobody will create significant open platforms of this type anymore,

Excellent development! These platforms weren't "open" in the first place, just pretending to be, so I don't see the problem.


I can't see why anyone would risk making an open platform again.

The Android growth phase has been incredibly lucrative for Google (and Microsoft, via patents). Have no doubt they'd try it again today.

And the justice system in the EU is different than in the US. It doesn't mean the next one will be the same.


Im glad, the openness of Android led to incredibly terrible phones with all kinds of crapware, Samsung being the worst. I wish Google would have just sold the os to oems with tight restrictions.



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