“Playtime is over in Android Land. Over the last couple of months Google has reached out to the major carriers and device makers backing its mobile operating system with a message: There will be no more willy-nilly tweaks to the software. No more partnerships formed outside of Google’s purview,” Ashlee Vance and Peter Burrows report for Businessweek. “From now on, companies hoping to receive early access to Google’s most up-to-date software will need approval of their plans. And they will seek that approval from [former Apple engineer] Andy Rubin, the head of Google’s Android group.”
“This is the new reality described by about a dozen executives working at key companies in the Android ecosystem,” Vance and Burrows report. “Some of those affected include LG, Toshiba, Samsung, and even Facebook, which has been trying to develop an Android device. There have been enough run-ins to trigger complaints with the Justice Dept., according to a person familiar with the matter.”
“When Android hit the scene in 2008, Google had a tantalizing pitch: Android was ‘open source.’ That is, Google would do the hard work of developing the code, and hardware and software makers were free to use the system at no charge. Carriers and device makers relished the idea of not paying royalties,” Vance and Burrows report. “As Google introduced Android updates, each named after a sweet, devices of varying capabilities flooded the market… It isn’t easy for consumers to keep up—and the same goes for software makers, who have to retool apps for every version and device to give their products a consistent look and feel.”
MacDailyNews Take: Fragmandroid.
Vance and Burrows report, “Google owes it to its partners and consumers to prevent Android from running amok. And yet murmurs abound that Android’s master has tightened up too much—that its policies limit licensees’ ability to differentiate their products. “The premise of a true open software platform may be where Android started, but it’s not where Android is going,” says Nokia Chief Executive Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft executive who recently inked a deal with his former employer instead of Google. He says he did so in part because he thought he would have more opportunity to innovate atop Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 software.”
MacDailyNews Take: You don’t get high up in the executive ranks at Microsoft without being able to shovel bullshit by the truckload.
Vance and Burrows report, “Google has also tried to hold up the release of Verizon Android devices that make use of Microsoft’s rival Bing search engine, according to two people familiar with the discussions. It’s these types of actions that have prompted the gripes to the Justice Dept., says a person with knowledge of the matter.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Open” in name only, yet still a royal mess.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “jmmx” for the heads up.]
Really?! No Way. Fragmented.
Good Lord.
Google – when you a sweet name when you get to “K”, why don’t you use “Krackel
“?
Excellent!!!
Royal mess? Squalid and poor mess is more like it.
And the wall begins crumbling down…
Sounds like Google’s realized that their “open” marketing spin hasn’t helped them in the marketplace. So they’ll toss it aside to better serve their business interests.
It’ll be interesting to see the tortured rationalizations that the open-source Google fans will have invent to justify this move. They already have to eat crow regarding their denial of Android fragmentation, as Google themselves have acknowledged it, according to the linked article:
Over the past few months, according to several people familiar with the matter, Google has been demanding that Android licensees abide by “non-fragmentation clauses” that give Google the final say on how they can tweak the Android code—to make new interfaces and add services—and in some cases whom they can partner with.
The true colors of liar Google is exposed.
Well, since android isn’t open anymore, there goes the only excuse fandroids had to not buy a iPhone
They’ll find something…
Methinks Rubin is an Apple mole. Or at least serves the same purpose, having now taken on the task of putting the genie back in the bottle.
“putting the genie back in the bottle”
Like when Rubin’s wife’s not in the mood.
Since Google cannot control the Android platform they will kill it with Chrome. And Andy Rubin will be the latest casualty of Google’s deceit.
This new restrictions isn’t really about ‘better for user’ but rather ‘try to get more money for Google’.
Google doesn’t really care about Fragmentation if they can still sell ads and services , they DO care when Fragmentation means OEMS are loading up on Yahoo, Bing, Baidu or hijacking Android code to make variants like OMS that don’t run Google services or Android Apps (where it makes no money). That’s why they are restricting Honeycomb to stop hijacks by chinese tablet makers.
New rules is to help Google keep making money of android : ‘OEM want to use Bing? Feel the Pain’.
I’m drinking an RC cola and admiring my cousin’s Plymouth from the stoop of my sister’s double-wide while I type this on the Android that Pa got with some chickens when he agreed to marry my uncle’s ex.
Don’t forget all the while nursing the wound inflicted by your rabid pet coon.
Don’t forget listening to Rush while looking at Faux Newz on the TeeVee…
No doubt, as Faux correct the lies coming from the All Obama Network brought to you by the failed Air America Democratic Liberal Losers that are now televised on MesSNBC funded by leftist hack GE who probably gets funding from the anti-American George Soros and let’s not forget the most NOT trusted name in stupidly politically incorrect news that couldn’t keep anything or anybody honest if they tried!…
The adage “If it looks too good to true, it probably isn’t.” pretty applies here. These phone companies, desperate to compete with the iPhone, fell for the old “bait and switch”.
Shame on the phone companies for being so gullible to think the the free ride would last forever. And shame on Google for pretending to be an altruistic band of really cool people, when it is simply another corporate entity attempting to maximize its own profits.
I know it seems counter-intuitive, but the saying is actually,
“If it sounds (seems/looks) too good to be true, it is.”
Explanation:
When the full thought is expressed, this is how it reads;
“If it seems ‘to good to be true’, it is ‘too good to be true’, so it’s not true.
It’s a valuable cautionary phrase, and I wouldn’t want to see it bastardized.
You are right Sir! Morning thinking isn’t as clear as it should be.
Thanks… Unchecked,this could lead to fragmentation of the proper phrase! Think of the mess that would cause…
😉
Do you mind if it’s bowdlerized? lol
Open source my ass. This has turn in a total cluster f**k for Google but especially is device makers. The only direction for Android OS is onward and downward, hopefully straight to the toilet.
1. “It’s Open”
2. “No, it’s not Open.”
See? It’s easy to run a company! 🙂
Google kind of reminds me of that guy at the gym who walks around the locker room nude…with a headband wristbands and a beer gut…as well as a 2 inch wang. You know, trying to be cool – but everyone can see that there are some serious shortcomings.
Wang stopped making computers years ago.
Is that why you stopped dragging my Wang around?
Between you and I, you could give wing to my wang, any day of the week and twice on Sunday. But you had better learn a thing or two about photopornographilingus first.
oops. Did I say that outloud?
😉
Mr. Open, may I introduce you to Ms. Plays For Sure.
It’s like drugs, first they give you for free to hock you up and then drugs (Google Android) control everything you have. Poor Google partners.
Let’s get back to Symbian. It’s still open!
Android fans are enamored of “open” systems because their own minds are so open.
In fact, they’re so open that their brains have fallen out.
Open as in open your ass to be raped by Google spies rummaging thru your private stuff.
Anyone know if Netflix has delivered an app for Android yet? They haven’t been able to create one due to the fragmentation. Man, I love watching an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus before falling asleep each night. Crisp and clear on my iPhone 4.
Netflix is certainly the Killer App on my iPad. Don’t know what I’d do without it!
OMFinG!!! Google is DOOMED! They have followed the bad, bad, evil, no scooby snack for you example of MAC and became closed.
Being closed isn’t bad. Claiming your open so you can dupe people into using your software is kinda bad…it’s at least underhanded. The only thing Android had going for it was it’s seeming openness (though that was really a fantasy anyway). Without even that perceived openness they have no chance against iOS.
Really Google doesn’t care about android that much, they do but then they also don’t. They only care about selling ads, Android lets them sell ads and collect info about folks for better adds, but so does iOS (though iOS gives them less data). They win either way. For them the only important thing about Android is that it sells ads for them.
if FaceBook in particular comes up with its own smartphone, it will certainly “fork” Android – like OPhone in China – with a non-Google version of its own design. maybe making a deal with Amazon for its app store.
why? because those guys are totally arrogant and think they are the next Google.
and very possibly the OEM’s will begin to do this too. the Amazon app store was what they all needed to go rouge.
Fragmentation? you ain’t see nothin’ yet!
Don’t you see?!
Get your so-called enemy to throw out cheap, poorly built, fragmented product to the desparately drowning hardware companies. Give them a defunct, crippled, weapons to compete. All the while the “Old PC Alliance” crumbles, infighting spreads and their whole world emplodes. (Could it have been the strategy all along while Steve and Eric were having coffee one day, planning the end of the dark days of the PC Alliance?)
“scrambled the enemy has become” – Yoda
This conspiracy theory has been posited here before, and although I’m sure it’s bogus, it sure is fun to think about, isn’t it? What if Jobs and Schmidt colluded to create this whole scenario in advance, even planning the impending law suit agains HTC?
Naw. Never happened.
Yeah I agree it’s not likely to be true and if it was a bunch of people would be in very serious trouble. It is fun though. I often thought that must be what Microsoft is doing with Apple but really it’s just Microsoft’s own incompetence. It’s like they couldn’t do worse if they tried.
technically Facebook doesn’t even need to fork Android
just use OS, but create a Dalvik VM runtime (a true one, not the stupid Playbook one) so all Android apps would be instantly compatible
then people with so little social skills that they don’t know how to make a proper phone call would buy a Facebook phone
Google!
Act First Think Later!
“No More Willy Nilly Tweaks”
Fragtardspeak for “Well, whadaya know, Apple was right all along, wooda thunk?”
Pandora is out of the box and the b*tch isn’t getting back in…
Exactly. Android is Open Source and Google are stuck with it that way. If Google does one little thing contrary to their Open Source licensing, they’re screwed.
Possible outcome: If Google get ticked off enough, they could abandon Android. No one else is going to pick it up and run with it! The hardware companies are all FreeTards.
And maybe: Google would then come up with some alternative OS that they DON’T make Open Source. If that becomes the case, I see much hilarity in our future from loads more FreeTard contentiousness. 😀
This is 5% Google try to clean up its fragmentation problem and 95% future mobile ad revenue insurance. Now that the hook’s been set in the carriers’ – and especially the manufacturers’ – mouths, they have no way to differentiate their devices from one another.
http://themacadvocate.com/2011/03/31/google-fights-for-its-business-mod-err-fights-against-android-fragmentation/